One thought on “The Door Interview”

  1. Kevin and Brad,
    I like your heart, and I’d like to make a suggestion about what the Church can do to help “market” itself (which is a business term I’d not prefer to be using, but such concern is picky rather than substantive):

    The most significant thing the local can do today if it wants to “market” itself is to listen to the community. And the second thing is to develop what I call permeable walls.

    Here’s my reason for this: Jesus and John the Baptist rejected the Temple as the “place of grace” and in its place Jesus established the “place of grace” at the table. In the evening, every day, so it seems, Jesus sat with all sorts and listened and taught and kibbitzed with his disciples and his opponents, and our Gospels are the result of this table fellowship approach to the “place of grace.”

    A noteworthy feature of the table practice is this: anyone could sit down, anyone could stand at the back, anyone could stand at the door, and anyone could lean through the window to hear the conversation. In other words, people got as close to Jesus as they wanted.

    Current churches have no permeable walls, unless they are megachurches. Here’s what I mean: take your local ordinary-sized church, and ask a stranger in. The first thing that happens is that everyone knows that person is a stranger. And the stranger suddenly knows himself as an “Other” rather than someone on the inside. Why? Because the walls between the local church and the world are impermeable, tall, and thick. Jesus’ table fellowship had no walls; people could come and go as they liked. Mega-churches have this going for them: you can come, you can sit down, you can visit, and you can leave and by and large they won’t bother you. This is a great “marketing” tool: why? Because people feel safe and can get as close to Jesus as they want.

    What do you think? Creating permeable walls is the next challenge for the Church if it wants to be a witness to the community. Maybe establishing some office in the middle of the town where people can mull around, ….?

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