Hated Hateful Christians

Sitting over coffee with one of my student leaders was suddenly interrupted by an escalation...a very sudden escalation at the tables near us. At one table sat 2 young women and a bald man with a Bible. At the other sits a middle-aged man with a mustache and a newspaper. All of them smoking cigarettes!

After overhearing a few comments made by bald Christian guy, mustache guy speaks up with intention. I don't hear the pricking comment into the small group's Bible study, but it is evident the comment was not a pleased one. It certainly was not inquisitive or yearning in nature. In a matter of moments, everything blew way the hell up.

The mustached man mentioned how much the Christian man hated him because he was gay. Christian bald guy tried to explain calmly that he did not, but gay mustached guy went on to tell bald guy what bald guy believed.

It hadn't taken long for me to realize this conversation is going nowhere; especially nowhere good.

It didn't.

All I was able to realize was that we have set a precedent for ourselves. Whether we believe any certain thing about gay marriage, prop 8, or homosexuality, none of it matters because we've already set for ourselves a precursory foundation of hate that we'll have a hard time ever replacing. (if we ever can)

Understanding that this situation began with a verbal attack on an unsuspecting Christian bald guy, I still wonder how that same conversation would have gone down if Christian bald guy and gay mustache guy had built a respectful friendship first.

What if gay mustache guy was friends with quiet college pastor guy in the corner?

How would that conversation have played out differently?

My hope is that....



My regret is that I will not ever know.

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LISTENING TO: "It's All Crazy! Its All False! It's All a Dream! Its Alright" by Mewithoutyou

Networks vs Neighborhoods

On many levels, the American Church is moving to the way of the "house church", and it has a great momentum to reach many people. We are seeing many Christians learn what it might look like to be followers of Christ as they love and serve their neighborhoods. We are seeing more and more large churches OF small groups instead of churches WITH small groups.

The outreach of the church is now being put in the hands of the church as opposed to the church leaders alone. Smaller groups and house churches are turning their eyes and hearts toward their neighborhoods in order to learn what the incarnational gospel might yield in comparison to the attraction gospel that has been the primary model utilized by the American Church to this point.

While this excites me to see where the American Church is moving the gospel, I fear it STILL misses the mark in reaching a college and young adult population. The move into neighborhoods will certainly serve to reach a postmodern, post-Christian society and culture, but let's not forget that post modernity and post-Christianity is NOT a generation.

This means while college students and young adults most often fall into the postmodern, post-Christian mindset, to reach a demographic I love and my heart breaks for, there is yet another reality to be mindful of.

College students and most young adults don't really have neighborhoods they live in for long. This is a pretty transient period of life where they live in different homes from month to month. This is a time of life lived in semesters as opposed to years. The rest of life is lived outside the house elsewhere. Home is where the couch is!

The sense of neighborhood is lost on the college student and young adult. So a house church mentality works well if your population has a house or spends any significant time in the house they have.

Now again, I love the house church model, and I think the American Church needs to continue moving in that direction for sure, bu my question, as a college pastor, is how do you move this model for a demographic without neighborhoods?

The answer lies in what college students and young adults DO have. Networks!

Thought the idea of a neighborhood may be lost, there is a strong sense of network in this demographic. We still frequent different areas such as coffee shops, bars, campuses, and clubs. These places have become different networks each person is connected to.

When you frequent those places, you become 'a regular'. Once I became a regular at Tupelo Coffee House, I started to recognize the other regulars. Once I began to recognize the other regulars, I began to notice them outside the coffee shop in other networks I am connected to. I recently recognized a Tupelo barista when I was walking around the monthly art walk downtown.

The whole interest of our networks is watching them overlap. "I didn't know you came here to this coffee shop!"

In order to begin really reaching the college and young adult population, we need to move from the neighborhoods to the networks. House churches need to be in coffee shops and bars and clubs and various other networks.

In a generation that has not yet settled down into neighborhoods, you have to be a neighbor in their networks.

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READING: "The Tangible Kingdom" by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
LISTENING TO: "Sounds Like This" by Eric Hutchinson