The Second of “The Only Two Questions Pastors Should Be Asking”

Lawrence Wilson writes in his blog about the only two questions which Christians need to be asking right now. Last week I addressed the first question. This week I offer you his words about the second questions.

The second fundamental question has to do with our witness in the world, how others perceive us and, by implication, how they perceive Jesus.

How do we transform the public perception of Christians as judgmental, anti-intellectual, and mean-spirited to welcoming, hopeful, and helpful, which is how the ordinary folk of Jesus' day perceived him?

The church has a serious public relations problem. We're seen as anti-women, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, and reactionary. Our efforts to make converts — even

in the rudimentary sense of leading people to affirm that Jesus is Lord — are constantly thwarted by this. People don't like us, and we can't seem to figure out why.

How do we change that?

The answer to both questions is the same.

When Christian people begin to live the way Jesus lived, not simply affirming as true the classic tenets of the faith and not merely avoiding the most obvious evils of our time but pursuing intimacy with God every day and making the hundreds of daily choices to be hopeful, faith-filled, gentle, compassionate toward the poor, pure minded, detached from the world, and forgiving,  just as Jesus was, we will be changed in character, not merely in name, and others will begin to see the church not as a den of bigots, misogynists, and pedophiles, but as a place of refuge, hope and salvation.

In short, we will have answered both of the fundamental questions facing the church.

A Modest Proposal

So here is my modest proposal for the transformation of church and society, a simple two-point plan:

One: Begin to think of salvation as the transformation of your entire self from death to life rather than as mere forgiveness for sin with a ticket to heaven.

Two: Stop telling people outside the church how they ought to behave and give full attention to the transformation of your own soul.

That's it.

[These are the thoughts of Lawrence Wilson. Some of the thoughts may or may not apply to our faith community at First Christian. Certainly, they are addressed to the whole universal Christian community in all places.]

Moving to the deeper places,
Jeff