When people are unlikely to walk into a church out of shame, guilt, or fear of being judged for their lifestyle or appearance, the Lord often uses individual Christ-followers to meet them where they are. When entering the foyer or sanctuary, a transgender person or prostitute would share the discomfort most churchgoers would feel.
Even if the seeds of redemption have been planted in that person, all it takes to stop the growth is one judgmental believer or congregation. An unwelcomed reception at church or caustic glance by a Christian could push them away indefinitely, back into sin and secularism. They’re already apprehensive about how they’ll be viewed by Christians. We can’t make them doubt they’ll ever find community among us. If so, they’ll likely return to a community they know will accept them. We can’t alienate those open to faith and feeling remorse by demanding repentance before relationship or conditions without unconditional love (Agape). Any of those mistakes may blow the opportunity to lead them to Jesus.
A churchgoer who doesn’t fully grasp God’s love for all humanity may have an off-putting reaction to revelations about sex and sexuality. Unfortunately, churches today aren’t making enough authentic disciples whose natural response to hearing about the sins of non-believers, no matter how shocking or egregious, is love and compassion. Most churchgoers haven’t been taught to live out the Great Commission daily and aren’t prepared to share about God’s grace and forgiveness with those who don’t look, think, or act like them.
Jesus didn’t repel, nor was he repelled by the culturally-repugnant sins of prostitutes and tax collectors. He was the Great Physician looking to heal the sick and Sacrificial Savior looking to redeem the lost. When we view and treat those who are different than us with humility and respect, we reflect and honor the God we worship. Unfortunately, His Church isn’t always as empathetic or missional.
The distance between our churches and American culture may be increasing but non-believers remain as open as ever to talking about Jesus. Recent Lifeway Research surveys found that two-thirds of non-Christians are willing to have a conversation about faith with a friend, and over half are willing to do so with a stranger. The fields are becoming riper for harvest as humanism and progressivism lead to disillusionment and despair. When someone is convicted by their conscience, they aren’t seeking a church but a person to trust and confide in.
It takes a tremendous amount of courage to open up about gender dysphoria or adultery with even a single Christian, wondering how they will react. Yet the advice of most pastors is to invite all non-believers to church. No one living an unbiblical lifestyle would readily disclose the details of their past in a public forum or to a group of several people they don’t know well. And worship services and small groups also aren’t designed for the personal, intensive discipleship and accountability they need. Most Christians let pastors handle those responsibilities, but there aren’t enough church leaders with enough time to disciple everyone with sordid pasts in the congregation and community.
Since They Won’t Come to Us…
The road out of transgenderism or the sex industry is difficult and complex, not linear. Support is often needed to water and nurture thirsty roots until they become healthy again. Individual disciple-makers must be available to:
- walk alongside them through those turbulent times
- remind them that God loves them unconditionally, regardless of their past
- encourage during spiritual, psychological, and physical ups and downs
- restore confidence that their true identity is as a child of our heavenly Father, not gender, sexuality, or the name they go by
Rushing “seekers” into a church setting is not healthy or helpful for them or the congregation. When helping someone struggling to rebuild a life and restore a faith they’ve lost, they don’t need directions to a church, where they may potentially be uncomfortable, unwelcomed, or unengaged in worship. What they need is someone to be present and dependable over an extended period, learning what Agape truly means. They need a friend to assist in navigating the doubts, thoughts, and emotions that accompany the transition from their former life to a new life in Christ.
Disciple-makers are “church” to those trapped in sin before they’re willing to enter a sanctuary. If no one is there between Sundays to offer love, wisdom, and support, many who’ve wandered away from the Lord will remain lost. Once they’ve rebuilt or established a relationship with Christ, they can comfortably and appropriately join the ekklesia (“called out ones”) and kuriakon (“those belonging to the Lord”) in sincere worship with other believers.
We Have to Go to Them…
“Unconditional” is meeting people where they are, not accepting or applauding sin, but being willing to enter environments considered by the self-righteous to be off-limits. We’ve all heard “What Would Jesus Do” but “Where Would Jesus Be”? If Jesus walked our streets today, chances are we’d be more likely to find Him in places and around people most churchgoers would prefer to avoid. Jesus would demonstrate Agape to those who wondered how God could possibly love them. If more Christians were willing to venture into uncharted waters to seek out those Jesus came to save, the shock and awe alone would transform communities and the lives of “sinners” who had felt forgotten and ignored.
A ministry through a church in Tampa Bay sends women out on Friday and Saturday nights to the red-light district to befriend, pray, console, and support dancers from the strip clubs. The dancers’ stories are heart-breaking – lives filled with abuse, trafficking, harassment, and humiliation. They’re not badgered by the women from church into forsaking their sinful ways, but are shown unconditional love, respect, and friendship they’ve never known. The result of that forbearance and patience is authentic transformation where dancers make their own choice to follow Christ and repent of their lifestyles.
It’s not our place as a church or believers to try and force anyone to change. Our role is to follow Jesus’ model of prayer, care, and share with everyone regardless of their backgrounds. There are stories of transgenders who found Christ, de-transitioned, and led a far happier life. In each case, someone strayed outside the comfortable confines of religious austerity and prayed for them, cared for them, and shared the good news that Jesus loves them no matter what they’ve done. Instead of reflexively and conveniently inviting those who don’t worship the Lord to a house of worship, they imitated Jesus and the early New Testament church in…
- Prayer – because evangelism is our task but the outcome is God’s purview
- Care – because Jesus had the perfect words but still felt it necessary to open ears and doors to evangelism through compassion
- Share – because Jesus didn’t stop at demonstrating His love but also told people who He was and is (i.e. the Gospel)
We can’t “outpreach” Jesus or produce any results without Him, so we should walk in His footsteps. Churches did so for 1,900+ years, serving as the food bank and homeless shelter, but have largely outsourced personal discipleship and charity to parachurch ministries. That dearth of discipleship means not enough churchgoers understand how Jesus conducted His life. He practiced Prayer/Care/Share on a daily basis with those who felt most disenfranchised by the religious establishment. An invitation to a worship service was not Jesus’ first step in His process for transforming lives. For us as Christ-followers, as we’ll discuss in the next blog post, “invite” should be the last step in our sequence for engaging people who are struggling with sin and shame.
It’s Your Turn…
Are your church’s members comfortable crossing moral and political aisles to seek out people they wouldn’t normally encounter, spending extended time building relationships with them, and speaking out about the love of Christ to offer hope in environments where it’s in short supply?
The post Reaching the Seemingly Unreachable appeared first on Meet the Need Blog.
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