Recently my wife and I walked through a local park during a festival, we found ourselves among the many "craft" booths where people display and sell various works of art and crafts. It is a great place to meet people and see the wares of local artists. Among these booths we happened by a booth that strangely did not seek to sell anything, except a hard core sales job of the impending doom of all who fail to pray a prayer of salvation and fail to heed their warnings. While the fabric of what they were saying was true, it was the way in which they were "hawking" their product that caused me great concern. As we proceeded by the booth, I leaned over to my son and said, "these are the guys that I have to constantly apologize in their behalf, because as a pastor, I'm linked with this type of harassment." Today we need to be more concerned about developing relationships with people, earning the right to share the Truth with them. This type of in your face evangelism serves to belittle the Gospel and reduce it to a fringe group's belief system. I believe the Gospel of Christ is important and needs to be shared, but it is the way we share it that makes a difference.

In his book "They Like Jesus, But Not the Church" Dan Kimball summarizes his work with this:

"We will be passionate about our mission to break out of the Christian bubble. I truly believe that many people will change their minds about the church if they meet Christians who break the stereotypes and care about them. People will give the church a chance if we ask them to forgive us."

Here is a quote from Henri Nouwen (also found in Kimball's book): "When we have been wounded by the church, our temptation is to reject it. But when we reject the church, it becomes very hard for us to keep in touch with the Living Christ. When we say, 'I love Jesus but not the church,' we end up losing not only the church, but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the church.

This challenge is especially great because the Church seldom asks us for forgiveness, at least not officially. But the Church as an often fallible human organization needs our forgiveness, while the Church as the living Christ among us continues to offer us forgiveness.

It is important to think about the Church as not as 'over there' but as a community of struggling, weak people of whom we are a part and in whom we meet our Lord and Redeemer."

I believe people who have rejected the Church or have left the Church because of some hurtful event need to understand the Church is the Bride of Christ. It is a community of human beings, fallible and prone to making mistakes, but nevertheless, the Bride of Christ. The Bride simply needs to ask forgiveness for misrepresenting the Groom!

Despite all its weaknesses, the Church is still the Bride of Christ whom he loves and was willing to die for, knowing all it's flaws.

The Church has lost its attractiveness, it has lost its compelling message, it has lost its ability to build relationships with those outside the Church. My life's work is to change this perception in my little realm of influence by building relationships with those hurt and alienated by the Church. Only when we begin to treat people of differing points of view with dignity and love will we ever be able to share the awesome news that Jesus loves them and wants a dynamic relationship with them.