That is well-said.

When I throw a party at my house and almost 50 people attend, it can often be challenging to figure out who the Chritians are and who the non-Christians are. There are some obvious give-aways: like the girl wearing the “Christian” t-shirt, or the guy who is drunk and slurring F-bombs.

But I love the fact that, for the most part, my non-Christian friends are relating to my “normal” Christian friends without knowing any better.

Then later, when I tell them that half of the people at the party were Christians, they are pleasantly surprised to find that these people were quite “normal”,easily able to conversate, and actually had more than a few things in common with them.

We try to throw at least 4 big parties each year. If every Christian I knew threw these kind of “open-invite” parties on a semi-regular basis, the Christian life would actually be fun, and possibly even attractive. Not to mention, I’d get to go to a lot of parties.

Many churches do have an “atmosphere of exclusion” and there is an “enormous us/them mentality” and unbelievers most likely will sense that. What can we do to make people feel truly welcome and comfortable? I think it helps if we’re WILLING to be open, genuine, and REAL with people. I think presenting the gospel should be kept simple (for it really is simple) and not cluttered with our own personal gobblygook (sp?). Of course, this means we must be willing to get outside our own comfort zone with people. We have to be willing to take the TIME to establish relationships with people outside our church sphere. It takes a lot of work to do this… Are we willing to go there? It’s a scary place outside of our comfortableness…

On the other hand, we’ve got to understand that not everyone will be receptive to “hearing” the gospel. What are we to do with this? Love them – because Jesus loved them and died for them too. They’re not really rejecting us, they are rejecting Jesus.

Boy, this post you wrote Ben has many, many angles to it. This type of post would be a great discussion for a small group full of unbelievers/believers.

So, I guess missional living starts (like everything else) in our relationship with Christ?

Do you think it may be that as believers, we also have a difficult time deeply believing the relevancy of the gospel to our own life and that Jesus does seem distant and dead even to us (except maybe for our ticket out of hell)? Just asking… I really do wonder if most of us have had a life-changing encounter with the person Jesus Christ…