The Gospel is for all

Trey Morgan has a good post (click here) challenging us to make sure that we don't turn people into our vision of what is respectful before we convert them. What if the individual above turned up at your church? After picking yourself up off the floor would you not only invite them in but ask them to sit with you?

Let me tell you about an experience I had in my last congregation (Tabernacle, NJ). A young couple (late 20s) showed up with two young children. He was Caucasian and she was Asian. Both had rather extensive piercings (she - nose, lip, tongue, eye brows; he - bridge of the nose, eye brows, lips, tongue) and some tattoos. I think we did a pretty good job of welcoming them in without staring too much. It turned out that they were looking for a church that was a little more traditional than where his parents (actually Mom and Step dad) were attending. At the other church the deacons wore Bermuda shorts, sandals, and waved in the air. They wanted something more sedate. At first we seemed to fit the bill. They were pretty regular in their attendance for a while. During my visits with them I discovered that she was still married to some other guy and the oldest child was his and the youngest belonged to the current guy. They wanted to know if their marital situation (or lack of) would be a problem. She had trouble getting a divorce from her husband because of his obstinance. So she gave up. The current guy was content to live this way and their previous church encouraged them to not worry about it. I had never experienced anything like this and was so surprised that an evangelical church would encourage such behavior. I told them yes it would but now I wish I had told them that our goal was to get to know them first. They quit coming after that. I'm not sure they quit coming because I told them their situation would be a problem because I continued to pursue them and tried to make sure they felt comfortable with us. After a while it became evident that they were no longer interested in coming for whatever reason.

I have no doubt that sooner or later we would have to deal with their situation. But I think we try to clean up people's lives before we get them into Christ and we lose some because they don't fully appreciate their position. That means we miss some in our evangelism because they don't clean up as easily as we want. I don't want to suggest that we accept sin but we do accept sinners who need to learn and grow and that may take a while. Better to get them into Christ first and then demand that they grow.