His Ways

Comments on my previous blog have caused me to be still pondering about church structure and how Jesus did things and I can’t help wondering how we have become so removed from the original idea of demonstrating the gospel by how we live and not by how we ‘do church’.  This morning I was catching up with some other blogs I follow and on one I have mentioned before (Martin Scott at http://3generations.eu/blog ) there was a comment on one of his posts by a lady called Liz.  Evangelism had been mentioned and she wrote that we should:

… … see our task as being one of getting on their page and building a bridge to an understanding of Jesus and how he answers their search for meaning.

She continued to explain this by recounting an experience a friend of hers had had.

I was recently with a friend who did an amazing job with this in his conversation with a couple of gay tarot readers. He told them about the ‘deeper’ message of the tarot images that many who use them have missed… and taking the cards, pointed out all the biblical archetype images, threading through them the message of Jesus. They were gobsmacked, told him they felt they probably had missed the really important message, and that they would be back. They returned to ask him to pray with them to connect with the Jesus they had overlooked all this time. He did. But sadly reflected to me later, ‘I wonder what church is going to be able to spiritually nurture a couple of gay tarot readers…?’

I’m sure that not many people (not just christians) would even know what the tarot cards consist of or their meanings so any who could actually relate to such people I admit would be few.  I’m sure Jesus would be able to connect with them but how many christians would?  (Although I remember once meeting a Portuguese girl called Barbara who lived with New Age groups and was a christian sharing her life and beliefs with them)  And as Liz also asks, how would they fit into church life?  The answer I feel is that they probably wouldn’t. 

Later in his blog, Martin referred to an occasion when he had asked a group of church-going christians:

How many think Jesus would make a good church member?

Why then when you confess to be followers of him are you focused on being good church members?

Hmmm. More questions and more pondering.  Where do I stand in all this? How would I react?  Am I so far removed from those who live differently that I don’t have anything in common to connect with them?  Who can relate to  those on the margins of society?  Has church become just for the (usually white) middle class?