NOTE: THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS, PUBLICATIONS, AND ORGANIZATIONS REFERENCED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THE SOLE OPINIONS OF THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR(S) AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF NEW WINE, NEW WINESKINS OR MULTNOMAH UNIVERSITY.

Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only?

To survive in a quickly diversifying global church, the emerging church movement must do a better job of opening up its doors — and pursuing justice.
By Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach, with responses by Julie Clawson, Brian McLaren, and Debbie Blue

At the turn of the millennium, I (Soong-Chan) began hearing a lot about the “emerging church.” It seemed that everywhere I turned somebody was talking about the emerging church. A clear definition of the term was elusive (see “What is the Emerging Church?” by Julie Clawson, below), but the emerging church seemed to reflect ministry and theology rising out of the generation after the baby boomers. In particular, the emerging church was Western Christianity’s attempt to navigate through the context of an emerging postmodern culture.

At the time the emerging church was coming into vogue, I was pastoring a multi-ethnic, urban church plant in the Boston area. It seemed that every brochure for nearly every pastors’ conference I received featured the emerging church. As I began to attend some of those conferences, I noticed that every single speaker who claimed to represent the emerging church was a white male. A perception was forming that this was a movement and conversation occurring only in the white community.

On one occasion, I was at an emerging church conference and was told directly that non-whites were not of any significance in the emerging church. Granted, this was one specific instance, but it led to the sense that the emerging church was not a welcoming place for ethnic minorities. At another conference, on the future of the church, one of the speakers invited up a blond-haired, 29-year-old, white male, replete with cool glasses and a goatee, and pronounced him the face of the emerging church. “This guy is a great representative of the future of American Christianity.” I cringed. In terms of the public face of the emerging church, white males dominated. It seemed like the same old, same old. As per the lyrics by The Who: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

When Professor Rah was writing The Next Evangelicalism, he asked me (Jason) to visit a number of Web sites for emerging churches. I discovered that the large majority of emerging church leaders were white 20- to 30-year-olds. Photos showed people in trendy clothing, sporting cool hairstyles and eyewear.

Some might respond, so what? If the majority of people to whom the emerging church movement appeals are younger people of European descent and stylistic flair, then so be it. But there is a larger problem. As I continued my research, memories from my own spiritual journey flooded my mind—memories of hopelessness and longing, of wanting to believe there was something more rich and diverse about Christian life than what I was experiencing in the white suburbs. There was a great sense of joy when I found an emerging church, a place where people from various backgrounds (so I thought) were gathered in one community. I quickly became a fan of the emerging church. But now, in the midst of my research, my excitement was beginning to fade.

The emerging church, or rather this particular expression of it, was in essence no different than the church environment in which I was raised. Younger and cooler, maybe, but still the same: white, middle- to upper-class, and reflecting many of the values associated with these categories. It became apparent to me that this “emerging,” postmodern church was simply the pierced and tattooed offspring of its older, modern parents.

Missing the Big Picture
Both of us, in our own cultural contexts, began to recognize that what was being presented as the future of Christianity was only a small sliver of larger changes in the church. Left out of the spotlight, and perhaps the whole discussion, was the fact that the church is going through change on a global level, not just in the West.

Part of the problem was the conflation of terms. The emerging church is popularly presented as a catch-all concept of a generational shift at work in the West, represented by specific brands such as “Emergent” or “Emergent Village,” a group of emerging church leaders who organized, established a board, gained members, and launched a Web site. There has been disproportionate coverage given to the emerging church in the Christian media and in Christian publications, exemplified by Emergent Village’s three separate book deals with major Christian publishing companies. As noted in The Next Evangelicalism, in 2000 only about 200 churches in the U.S. and the U.K. could be identified as emerging churches. Yet, there are more than 50 books with emerging church themes. In contrast, there are less than a handful of books written about, for example, the second-generation Asian-American ministry, which numbers as many as 700 churches.

Further complicating the confusion is the recent notion among some in the West that the emerging church as a whole has died. For example, in January 2010, one blogger wrote an obituary for the emerging church. The obituary characterized the emerging church as having made “many advances in the Christian church, including facial hair, tattoos, fair trade coffee, candles, couches in sanctuaries, distortion pedals, Rated R movie discussions, clove cigarettes and cigars, beer, and use of Macs”—a satirical characterization that nonetheless seems to hold a grain of truth.

Even in declaring the death of the emerging church, the focus is on its Western expression. The face and heart of the movement that was being lamented was defined by white Americans, furthering the perception that the emerging church is an exclusively Western, white expression. Even when the blogger notes the emerging church’s contributions to “women’s issues, conversations about sexuality, environmentalism, anti-foundationalism, [and] social justice,” they are put in the context of Western society.

Another example of the difficulty in understanding and using the term “emerging church” is found in a blog entry from December 2009. The blogger states that “history will most likely mark 2009 as the point of transition and maturation for the emerging church movement.” The “emerging church” being referred to is the Western expression of it; the history provided centers on events in Western countries and cultures. Yet found in the following sentence is this statement: “various streams within the movement will continue on for many years to come. For example, the biggest global emerging church event on the calendar for 2010 will take place in Brazil and be attended mostly by Latin Americans.” If the larger emerging church has many different streams, then why, if one of those streams supposedly has dried up, is the entire movement being declared dead?

In truth, the term “emerging church” should encompass the broader movement and development of a new face of Christianity, one that is diverse and multi-ethnic in both its global and local expressions. It should not be presented as a movement or conversation that is keyed on white middle- to upper-class suburbanites.

Finding a Balance
In search of some much-needed perspective, we spoke with a number of people in Emergent Village. Do they think the emerging church is truly dead? If not, where is it headed and what does it have to offer?

Emergent Village participants interviewed for this article held the same general belief: The emerging church is not, in fact, dead. Both David Park, who had previously been involved with the Metro Atlanta Emergent Cohort, and Anthony Smith, a member of the Emergent Village Coordinating Group, noted that if anything about the emerging church has died, it is the novelty, hype, and commercialism given to it by the Christian publication industry.

“Christian [publishing] took the emerging church from 0 to 60 in a matter of seconds,” Park said. On this same note, Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy, co-host of a Chicagoland Emergent cohort, said that “the emerging church has a number of people of privilege, and the Christian publishing companies handed the keys over to them.” According to Cynamon-Murphy, this led to difficult choices for those who wished to use the published materials as a means to effect real change. Waning attention from the media could likely prove to be beneficial, said Park, allowing more space for those in the emerging church to “get on with the work.”

Cynamon-Murphy and others, such as Julie Clawson, a member of the Emergent Village Council (Emergent’s leadership group), spoke of changes and shifts occurring within the church, both in its larger sense and in the Emergent context. “The conversation [in the larger church] is shifting from a belief-based system to a relationship-based system,” said Cynamon-Murphy, a perspective she believes matches that of Emergent and which will help bring about real transformation and liberation focused on people of all backgrounds, not only the privileged. In words echoing our own experiences, Clawson noted that the emerging church is moving away from its “initial expression as something cool, fun, and trendy,” and toward the “hard work of building its identity,” which includes recognizing the important role of missions in the life of the church.

So if the emerging church is still alive and well, what is the next milestone on its path? Many feel it’s the difficult and challenging work of racial reconciliation. Melvin Bray, a member of Emergent’s Village Council, discussed the importance of the emerging church working toward a “wider voice [being given to] a wider breadth of people.” More specifically, Bray said that the emerging church should seek to become an agent in “creating opportunities for those who, in the past, have been marginalized.” This would direct the conversation away from being centered “exclusively on a Western theological perspective,” giving those who have long been subordinated to colonialism an opportunity to “deconstruct non-helpful religious constructs” and engage God in their own ways.

In talking about racial reconciliation, Anthony Smith said there is a difference between racial diversity and racial justice. Simply including people from ethnic minorities in events and leadership positions is not enough. Doing so may create the appearance of racial diversity, but this would only be a surface solution. Instead, the emerging church must engage in what Smith calls “racial penance,” a situation in which there is true justice between people of different ethnicities, allowing the church to “get rid of Western, white captivity.” Smith said that “friendship is important for repentance” and that “isolation is dangerous.”

The way these concepts are communicated—especially to younger people—is very important, according to Alise Barrymore, pastor of a self-identified emerging church called the Emmaus Community. Specifically, said Barrymore, the emerging church needs to offer “new language and tools to help the next generations understand church.” This, combined with the drive for racial reconciliation and justice, will be crucial for ethnic churches such as the African-American church, which places high value on “negotiating the [role] of race.” Failure to effectively engage individual cultures on their own terms will result in “not translating ideas into language that is accessible and understandable to others,” said Clawson, creating a barrier to the spiritual and social progress the emerging church seeks.

An Emerging Future?
Members of the Emergent movement are optimistic that a more ethnically diverse and inclusive future is possible. Has there been a shift in Emergent? One of the major developments in recent years is that the more visible faces and names from the early years have moved on from leadership in the emerging church, and Emergent Village is now in the process of building an identity that doesn’t rely on these well-known people.

If the white male locus of Emergent is truly passé, then Emergent has the opportunity to become a part of the larger stream of the real emerging church. If the label of the emerging church is to have a future, then the term needs to be reclaimed and disassociated from the specific brand of Emergent, and applied much more broadly to the church around the world.

The burgeoning church is not just a small sliver of American Christianity; rather, it must be seen in the context of a larger movement of God on a global scale. The real emerging church is global and multi-ethnic—and a truly international, truly diverse emerging church has great potential to bring about authentic, deep revival to the world.

Soong-Chan Rah is Milton B. Engebretson associate professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago and the author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. Jason Mach is a student at North Park Theological Seminary.

What is the Emerging Church?
On its face, the emerging church is a decentralized Christian movement exploring what it means to follow Jesus in our postmodern age.

Since it is cross-denominational and cross-cultural, however, expressions of emergence vary widely, encompassing everything from evangelical conversations about being culturally relevant to mainline liturgical renewals, from a rediscovery of social justice among suburban Christians to new monastic communities among the urban poor, from provocative theological discussions to postcolonial reconciliation movements (to name just a few). These culturally and theologically diverse streams are discovering together how to move the faith forward into the 21st century.

Transparently open-sourced, the emerging conversation includes anyone who desires to lend her voice to it. Emergent Village serves as one facilitator of this conversation, resourcing and connecting people to the diversity of emerging voices worldwide.

Theological discussions sparked by leaders in Emergent are often met with controversy, especially when they challenge traditional Western assumptions about the gospel and encourage the voices of women and other cultural minorities. Nevertheless, both Emergent and the broader emerging movement are navigating what it means to practice sustainable faith in a globalized and postmodern/postcolonial world, and hopefully helping the church universal better understand and celebrate the beautiful plurality of Christian expressions worldwide.

Julie Clawson is author of Everyday Justice and a member of the Emergent Village Council.

Overcoming Resistance
I’m glad that Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach have addressed some important questions about this wide-ranging phenomenon known as emerging church. I might address a few small details differently. For example, while I’m very happy to see that many new churches are being planted, for a lot of reasons I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to brand and count them as “emerging” or “emergent” or whatever. What’s far more significant to me are wide-ranging changes in outlook among a wide range of leaders in both new and existing churches—Catholic, mainline Protestant, Pentecostal, evangelical, etc.

But small quibbles aside, I am in full agreement that we need to understand the real story in terms of a shift away from white, Western, male hegemony and homogeneity. For many years I’ve believed that “the postmodern conversation” in the West was one side of the coin, and the more interesting side was the postcolonial conversation arising in the global South.

To me, deep, theological conversations about the shape and purpose of the gospel, along with issues of justice—racial, environmental, and economic—are far more urgent and important than arguments about what goes on in church services, as valuable as church services are. The way forward must involve—and not just in a token way—exactly the kind of diversity Soong-Chan and Jason call for. The systemic resistance to this diversity is subtle but strong, and its consequences are sad. Many of us have been working quietly behind the scenes in hopes that this resistance can, by God’s grace, be overcome.

Brian McLaren’s most recent book is A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.

A Broken Church, Renewed
The church at its best is a messed-up, broken witness to the grace of God, and at its worst a suffocating, power-seeking, patriarchal, and divisive body. If the emerging church reflects some of the values of the “capitalist entertainment empire,” it also has generated an enormous amount of creativity and freedom to question structures and texts and power. Certainly other communities all over the world are generating similar freedoms.

The church I serve is diverse. The congregants are old and young, from Catholic, mainline, fundamentalist, and atheist backgrounds, gay, straight, working class, intellectual, Buddhist, Quaker, drunks, in recovery, artists, and musicians. They are square, circular, zigzag, hyphenated, and occasionally Republican.

Despite these differences, there is a commonality to the people who end up at our church as well. They are usually not wealthy. They tend to question a lot about mainstream society. They are often of European descent. I would not hold us up as the face of the future of American Christianity. That would be silly, scary, and boring. Every manifestation of the church reflects some of the aberrations and illusions of the culture it lives in. Hopefully it also reflects the entirely life-giving love of God.

Debbie Blue is pastor of House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota and author of Sensual Orthodoxy.

Is the Emerging Church for Whites Only? By Soong-Chan Rah and Jason Mach, with responses by Julie Clawson, Brian McLaren, and Debbie Blue. Sojourners Magazine, May 2010 (Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 16). Cover.

The name of the band came when one of the band members read Lauren Weisberger’s critically acclaimed novel The Devil Wears Prada. The story is about a controlling, stylish-New York fashion magazine editor who is known for her stuck up, selfish attitude, and is referred to as “the Devil incarnate” by some of her employees. From the reference to fashion comes the catchy title, The Devil Wears Prada.

TDWP lead vocalist Mike Hranica states the band’s name, while from the novel, is about the concept of how the devil uses materialism and consumerism to remove our focus from loving God. Hranica stated in an interview, “if the devil were walking around, he would be wearing Prada or Gucci, or some super expensive clothing just so he could go around and be like, ‘Yo! Check out what I’m wearing! I’m wearing this sweet stuff!’ God, on the other hand, would be walking around wearing rags because he wouldn’t care. He’d be like, ‘You know what? I’m clothed; it’s all good. I am just as good as all these other people walking around.’”

The show was intense as mind blowing, as I was expecting, but I noticed something in particular that I’ve never really noticed before. I think music is certainly a gift from a loving God who created us to be creative and reflect His love. I’ve noticed that when I’m at most rock shows, up close and squished between sweaty bodies of people I’d probably avoid if I saw them on the street, this overwhelming sense of passion begins to overtake my body, and with the adrenaline rush from the live show, I all of a sudden I feel like I am capable to take on anything and save the world. I’ve noticed that I frequently find myself thinking of social justice initiatives and global peace advocacy when I am with that crowd, rocking out! I’m sure it sounds strange, so let me clarify a few things.

I’ve always had a strong connection with music that is different than just enjoying a song or a band. I seem to really find myself and often find God in music in more often than in nature or in a story. Music just seems to have a special place in my life. Historically, throughout American Evangelical History, metal music has been primarily associated with the demonic influence, Satanism, and evil. The sound of people screaming lyrics seems to resemble more the shriek of demons and appear to be filled with anger rather than the “baah”of a lamb or the peaceful sound of a babbling brook. However I think I see things a bit differently.

When I’m at a hardcore show or even just listening to metal and hardcore music, I envision the screaming and fast paced music more like the roar of the Lion of Judah as He wages war against injustice and sin rather than Satan torturing a soul in Hell. I believe that there will certainly come a day where God will judge the living and the dead and there will be a great war between good and evil and evil will be destroyed.

On the contrary, when I’m enjoying mellow, slow, acoustic music, I envision myself basking in the awe of God’s presence and enjoying His blessed creation. With this sentiment in mind, I wonder if this is how God uses music to connect to us, His creation. It’s one thing to sing a song; it’s another thing to be completely swept away, in awe of grace, joy, beauty, and wonder.

Furthermore, I cannot seem to get over the fact that God uses music and art as a platform to transform us and mold us into His image. I’m not talking about singing praise songs on a Sunday morning in church, I’m talking about the emotions that are drawn up when you hear your favorite band singing your favorite song and what the melody and notes crafted together create within you. While some would say it’s selfish, I think it’s an example of who God made us to be: loving, passionate, and affectionate creatures. God created us with emotions and music is just one way in which we respond with emotion.

I’ve noticed that during a live show, as soon as the band takes the stage, all of a sudden it’s as if all of those little mundane things that separate us as a culture (race, class, religion, skin color, etc) seem to melt away and for a moment we are united together, all focused on one thing, the music that we love. A common good unites us regardless of diversity.

In his captivating story, The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis depicts Aslan the Lion creating the great mystical land of Narnia by singing. Rather than stern, rigid statements and commands, Aslan’s creation comes out in the form of a beautiful, sweet song, with each note building on the previous one. The song begins to reach certain points of climax as Aslan’s creation becomes more and more beautiful and more complex. Lewis brilliantly captures a rather beautiful expression of God’s artistic ability through the use of a beautiful medium, song. Lewis weaves together the intricacies of the Creation narrative while simultaneously capturing the beauty of what the experience of creation would have been like if we were there to see it, because God said that it was good and beautiful.

There is no song or music piece that captures God’s heart perfectly, for I think if such a song existed, it would have to contain elements of heavy metal, jazz, acoustic guitar, piano, etc. The music of God is something that is so mysterious yet so revolutionary, it cannot be captured.

I believe God has written us to perform certain parts of his song called Redemption and that we all play a different tune at different times. When put together this displays a beautiful example of the true and living God. God the Father through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice given by His Spirit is a song that is being composed and written and will one day be performed. As each day goes by He is making edits and deletions of parts of that song in each one of us until it is just right. When that day comes He will return and will look at his beautiful creation once again and say, “it is good.”

Until that day, I ask you to think of what song you are singing. What music are you playing with your life? Maybe you’re destroying injustice or maybe you’re relaxing in God’s presence. Or maybe you’re playing a sad song that makes God weep and He desires to retune that song until it’s a beautiful reflection of His love for you. What song are you playing, and what song are you called to play?

Underøath is perhaps one of the most prominent metalcore/hardcore bands to come on the “scene” in the last 4 years or so. With over 1 million records sold, they’ve reached mainstream status followed by musical grandeur. With success at their doorstep, you would think that they’d be like any other rock band….alcoholics, womanizers, and drug users. But Underøath is different. Underøath is, as a band, about the name of Jesus Christ. Underøath is what several within Christian subculture would consider a “Christian” band. However you won’t find them doing mega-church tours or Christian youth events and you won’t find them preaching a salvation message from the stage. In addition, you won’t find the average gathering of “churched” youth group kids at an Underøath show. The band of course has fans who are followers of Christ, but they aren’t out to “target” a particular demographic and aren’t about “selling Christ.” Nevertheless Underøath is my favorite band, not just because I love their music but also because of their faith in Christ. The band, at their core, is real and honest with people about who they are and do not separate their faith from the culture they’re part of. Their message is revealed by their actions more than their words (not necessarily lyrics, but “words” from the stage and in the media) and I am particularly eager to see them play tonight!

On this cold November evening at the Roseland Theater in downtown Portland, Underøath puts on a stellar performance and my small yet energetic body is enthralled by the show. The energy from the crowd of devoted fans is astounding and ecstatic! It’s down to last minutes of the show and after an amazing and hard hitting 14 song set the band takes the stage once again for their encore performance.

As anxious as I am to know what their encore will be, my ears prick up and I am soon screaming my heart out in approval as the band begins to play a new fan-favorite off their latest record (Lost in the Sound of Separation), a song entitled Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear. Unlike the typical scream-rich hardcore/metal music you get from Underøath, this song utilizes the smoothness of vocalist/singer and drummer Aaron Gillespie rather distorted screams of front man Spencer Chamberlain. The song is slow and sweet! I, as well as many other fans, love this song because it speaks of the reality of God’s forgiveness and grace and how we are all loved and cherished as God’s children.

Chills overcame me as I peered at others in my proximity. Not surprisingly, I saw several people, bodies drenched in sweat, with their hands raised in praise and worship to God and embracing the song’s beauty. I soon felt something move inside me that I couldn’t hold back. In the midst of hundreds of sweating, tired, hardcore kids I lifted my hands in worship to my savior, singing along at the top of my lungs. Before long, it became apparent that I was encountering God’s presence! I stood there basking of the awe of my Savior’s grace in quite a strange place–a hardcore show! My experience encountering God with Underøath is something I have not forgotten! Every time I hear this song, I am reminded of that night.

I think so many times in our American Evangelical subculture we tend to limit the places and ways in which we can “encounter” God’s presence, having created religion. It seems as though we’ve put God in this box with rules attached to Him, and we’re only “allowed to” encounter and experience God in certain ways (Prayer, “quiet time”, church on Sunday morning, etc) as if He’s not around other times or doesn’t care. I think worship is holistic in nature, being an embodied response to God for what He’s done for us, regardless of our environment, upbringing, etc.

When it comes to encountering God in the arts, artistic expressions of faith have been limited, if not totally removed from “Christendom” except for the likes of Thomas Kinkade paintings or Fireproof-esque movies (the list could go on) that are created within the subculture with the sole purpose of bait and switch evangelism of the broader culture or being created specifically for Christian people within the subculture. It appears to me that we as evangelicals have restricted God to our finite, western, American, religious systems and nothing more. Where have the artistic expressions of faith gone? Where has the engagement of culture gone?

Too Bright Too See Too Loud to Hear was not written with the intention of worshiping God and the band’s purpose was not evangelism, but it appeared to create an atmosphere of worship among the crowd that night and I believe people encountered the true and living God. The song is first and foremost a work of art, regardless of whether it expresses the faith of the band or not. It led me to encounter God and I felt no different worshipping God in that crowd of people than I did in a church on a Sunday morning. While several within Christian subculture today would say that a hardcore concert at a “secular” venue with “secular/non-Christian” bands performing alongside “Christian” bands is not where we’d go to worship our Savior, I know for a fact that God revealed Himself to me there! I experienced God in a place that was not expected and I experienced God through the medium of poetry and music…through art.

I believe the Kingdom of God will break in when and where we least expect it, and God will move in ways we least expect Him to. As MTV’s Diary of a Rock Star says “You think you know, but you have no idea!”

To listen the song Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear, go here. Click on the “more info” link in the side bar to see the lyrics while the song is playing.

Moreover, if you took a room of 100 people, 50 Christians and 50 non-Christians, and asked similar questions, you might as well put a bunch of hungry monkeys in a room with only one banana. The vibe in the atmosphere would certainly not be pleasant.

I think we as humans can correctly state that we can become rather uncomfortable around those of which we do not agree with. Be it theology, politics, ethics, personal practice, etc. we, the human race, throughout history have naturally tended to gravitate toward those in which we are in alignment with.

Ever since I can remember I have always struggled to love and befriend those of which I find disagreement with. More recently within the last few years, as my theological and political beliefs have shifted quite profoundly, as a Bible college student I have found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable with those of which I disagree in areas such as theology, politics, and personal practices. In some cases it has even gotten to the point where I don’t feel like I can completely be myself in some ways unless I am with people of whom I agree with. This is sad, but true. As in other cases, it has become a rather shameful practice of mine to subconsciously stereotype individuals of whom I disagree with into a completely separate group of people. For example, when disagreements arise, I have essentially said to myself “you think (blank) about this, you must be one of them” Fill in the blanks with whatever labels you wish (liberal, conservative, Calvinist, Arminian, etc) and voila, you have my rather vial thought process. I have conceived a rather dangerous “me vs. them” mentality. This is a personal aspect of which I do not envy, and I have spent many restless nights fighting with myself over my desire to be a truly loving person.

On a wider scale I have always asked the question of how we as evangelical Christians can engage those within our postmodern culture who share different beliefs. I have noticed that we seem to get so hung up on the other’s “wrong” beliefs that we never get past arguing, wasting precious time bickering with one another.

It wasn’t until recently that I truly began to understand engagement with culture can look like. I was listening to a sermon MP3 and the pastor mentioned this…
We could spend our time asking questions about rather mundane issues of theology, politics, morality, etc.

But what if we asked different kinds of questions?
Can we as opponents agree, as different as we are, that Christ’s body was broken and blood poured for the healing of the world? Can we agree on that? What would it be like if the next time we were in a shouting match with a fellow Christian we said
“Can we agree that Christ’s body was broken and his blood poured out for the healing of the world? Can we agree on that?”

Imagine what it would be like if the we engaged someone who was not a Christian, who didn’t want anything to do with God, Jesus, The Bible, or Church? What if we asked, “do you agree that the world needs healing? I believe Jesus’ body was broken and blood was shed for the healing of this world. Can we agree that the world needs healing? Can we agree on that?”

Also, can we agree on our need for the grace and peace of Christ? Can we agree on that? The interesting thing about our opponents is that we both agree that we both need the grace and peace of Jesus Christ. We have a connection we didn’t know we had. Our boundaries would soon look much different and we wouldn’t want to throw bombs at each other if we realized our mutual need for the grace and peace of Christ.

What it would be like if this was how we viewed things?
How would our world change?
How would our faith as followers of Christ be changed?