Not 'jerks or weirdos'
"I sometimes talk to my church about the "ministry of being normal". As believers, we are necessarily going to have a lot of distance between us and those who don't follow Christ. We live differently, love differently, hope differently. We're citizens of a different country.
"But it might be helpful if we limit the distance between us and the world in a lot of other ways. We don't have to flaunt our lack of a TV and be weird and preachy about grinding your own grain. That only serves to put unnecessary distance between us and the people we're trying to reach. Instead, we should try to engage the world around us, know what our neighbors care about, and try to inhabit the same universe they do."
"But it might be helpful if we limit the distance between us and the world in a lot of other ways. We don't have to flaunt our lack of a TV and be weird and preachy about grinding your own grain. That only serves to put unnecessary distance between us and the people we're trying to reach. Instead, we should try to engage the world around us, know what our neighbors care about, and try to inhabit the same universe they do."
posted by Milton Stanley at 4:03 PM
2 Comments:
I think it's a good point, but his examples are kind of funny. Do Christians really not have TVs and grind their own grain? More to the point, studies don't prove out the notion that Christians are very different at all, generally speaking. The question might be, why do we still have TVs? I ask myself that almost every time I turn it on!
Good points, Bob. Many if not most Christians in the U.S. are not much different from their lost neighbors.
Those who are different in certain ways, however, may well be tempted by the kinds of pride Mr. McKinley mentions. I confess, for example, that I struggle against an elitist pride in both not watching television (we have one, but no cable or antenna, so watch only the occasional video) and in having a grain mill.
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