I think a lot of the difficulty “christians” have in connecting with our communities is that we are so often doing things “backwards“. Gods plan (laid out in scripture) is that we would love our communities as much as we love ourselves, and he would (through his spirit)point out sinful behavior and “Judge” people. I personally find it much easier to judge people and point out their sinful behavior and then leave it “up to Jesus” to love them (because frankly “they” get on my nerves.) Unfortunately, we are never going to change the world as long as we have the whole process Jesus left us with “backwards”.

Jesus demonstrated this when he picked “rough” and “sinful” commercial fishermen (think Deadliest Catch) to be his disciples. Interestingly enough, he did not send them off for a nice haircut and four years of seminary-instead he just said “follow me”. Does that mean we can’t be discerning? Nope… That’s why we will have background checks for workers in our actionkidz areas. It just means that our primary activity is not to “judge” people and “let them know what their problems are”…truthfully, they probably already know. Our job is to “woo them” through our loving actions into the presence of Jesus.