When you are painting you end up waiting for stuff to dry quite often. So what do I do to fill that time? I listen to Tripp Fuller and Chad Crawford and their stellar Homebrewed Christianity guest John Franke.
Oh, and because I’m a bit of a podcast geek, I transcribed a bit of what was said by Mr. Franke. The simplicity of his statement here is really important.
“A student came up to me because I had mentioned that I am an evangelical and been involved in leadership at evangelical gatherings, I’m a mainliner and been involved in leadership in the mainline church and some initiatives in the Presbyterian church, and I’m an Emergent and I’ve been involved in leadership in Emergent Village – and these things work together well for me.
The student asked, ‘How do you do that? Theologically, how do you pull that off?’
I said, ‘The truth is, it doesn’t have much to do with theology. Treat people well, treat them respectfully, care about what they’re doing, want to get to know them, be friendly and hospitable with them. What I find is that if you take that posture you are pretty welcome wherever you go – whether it is a more mainline context, whether it is a more conservative context, or with people that are trying to do some different things. And there is a part of me that says that is kind of what Jesus is calling us to do.’
Which doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes say something that challenges folks in different settings. But people are more likely to hear that more when they feel that you are respectful, that you’ve taken the time to listen and understand, and you offer your challenge in a generous way. And my experience has been that a lot of these boundaries can be crossed if we take a posture of discipleship to Jesus on the personal ways that we engage with people.
If you think that somebody is wrong and your response is to blast the hell out of them, do you think their response is more likely that they will listen to you or less likely that they will listen to you? It’s less likely. So if you want to help, why do that?”
So maybe this is closer to what Paul meant when he talked about “being all things to all people.” Maybe he didn’t mean so much that we are to be relevant or versatile or able to converse in Patoi-infused English. While helpful, all those things are really way too surface-level to be “scripture” (if ya know what I mean). Maybe he meant that we are to genuinely care about everyone. All people and all things. That we are to remember to love our neighbour before we remember to have a right theology. I believe Paul was less concerned with converting the “Gospel message” into the religious and philosophical language of the Athenians and more concerned with loving the Gospel to them. And, POOF, he got a two-for-one deal.
One Comment
that was a powerful bit of the interview.