Why do you do that?

I don't really know who is reading this blog or how many people are reading. But I know some of the people who are reading (because you've told me) and I can tell something by some of the questions and comments I have gotten. I have a feeling mostly it's people who are a part of Community Christian and people who are happy we are a church that is willing to be agents of God's Scandalous grace. I get the feeling that you are glad we consistently are letting people know in as many ways as possible that God's grace really is for everyone and that you are welcome in His church. But I also get the feeling that you don't always understand WHY we do some of the things we do. So I think I will try to occasionally give you some of the ideas that are behind some of the stuff we do.

Since it's the most public thing we do I'll start by talking about why we do Sunday celebration services with some of the elements we do. As you know we believe that our services need to be culturally relevant and at the same time be devoted to true teaching of scripture. But there are principles even further to that cultural relevance that you may not know. For instance in our programming team one of the things we are trying to do early on in our public services is to get the person who hasn't been to church for a while to "uncross their arms."

If you get an un-churched person or anti-churched person (someone who’s been to church in the past but has been turned off by the experience) they will come in with their arms crossed. You can see this person walking in with a nervous or negative look on his face. He may literally have his arms crossed. His body language is saying, “I already have my mind made up about church, but I’ve heard you’re different, so prove it to me,” or “I don’t think you have any idea of who I am or what my life is like; prove to me that you do,” or “I think you Christians are a bunch of uptight, judgmental, holier than thou types, prove to me that you’re not” and, “You have one chance.” This person’s arms are crossed, but it goes deeper. With that attitude this person is very unlikely to experience God in the worship and not ready to really hear the message. There is an excellent chance that they’ll walk out the same way they walked in.

So what do we do? We want to help the Holy Spirit uncross their arms. It’s our responsibility. Because this person matter to God and most likely they matter to someone at our church who took a risk and invited them to come. God has already been working to get that person to come. We also have to do it because this person probably didn't get this way by accident. Somewhere along the line they had a bad experience with a church or some Christian - it's often our fault. We need to unfold their arms, and we do it quick.

Before I go further I want you to think about some of the stuff you think we do to make that happen and how you could be part of that process.