Hospitality.

We had a candidate come in for the college minister position today. It was very exciting to hear his views on ministry and what the goals and vision for this unique time in students lives should be. However, it was not just us asking questions of him - it was him asking questions of us. Probably one of the most compelling questions was over the culture of Baylor, what it is to be a student at Baylor.

I would describe Baylor culture as involved. Students are very involved in many different organizations and activities, many times over-involved. I would describe Baylor as a place where the lines of Christian culture are clearly seen - popular music, hot reads, involvement in service causes and organizations. You mean you haven't read Blue Like Jazz? or Redeeming Love? Or Desiring God? Or Wild at Heart? You haven't seen the Invisible Children video? You don't know who Shane and Shane are? Don't get me wrong here, I think all of those can be, and in and of themselves, are amazing things and, with the exception of Redeeming Love I have delved into all of them.

I would also describe Baylor as being two separate worlds. There is the Christian culture world - these students may or may not actively attend church, but have a church background and consider themselves to adhere to most of it. Then there is the other side - students who have no church background, or have rejected their experience with church.

These two sides make up the challenges of ministry to a campus like Baylor - gleaning through what is good about Christian culture, tradition, denominational doctrines, theologies, philosophies, practices, while keeping the focus where it should be - and - crossing over and beyond barriers between "churched" and "unchurched", or even maybe evangelical traditions and other Christian traditions.

These challenges are at best a stern test to face effectively, and at worst a goliath. The candidate however, agreed with the direction our ministry has taken for years - that it is in community that these barriers are best met. He told a story about gathering all the students involved in all the small groups from his college ministry together for an event. He said he met people he had never seen before - and as the college minister he was supposed to have met everyone! One student was a Catholic who attended a small group because that is where he found community, but went to Catholic mass on Sunday mornings. These experiences are not unlike much of our small groups, where students gather who aren't necessarily part of our church, or any church, because it is a place where they experience community and engage in life together.

In the book I've been reading by D.A. Carson, he poses the question, "How then, shall we tie together the biblical mandated responsibility of Christians to interact warmly with those who are not believers, and the biblically mandated responsibility of Christians to distinguish, on doctrinal, experiential, and ethical grounds, betweent hose who are Christians and those who are not?". His response:

"What must not be done is to overthrow either priority. There are churches that are mightily concerned to preserve their own comfort zones, to preserve all their prized traditions... Christians in these churches are likely to evangelize only those people who are already churched or who in some sense belong to a churchy culture. Of course, in the sheer grace of God, some biblical illiterate may come in off the street and be converted - but this will owe very little to the church's commitment to spread the gospel among those who have never heard. They will insist that people become Christians before they can actually belong to them. Sadly, however, these believers may find it almost impossible to explain the gospel to people whose subculture is far removed from their own...

What we should strive for, surely, is a church that is full of teaching (doctrinal, ethical, historical, spiritual), rigorous in its discipleship, and patently faithful in its exercise of godly discipline - and at the same time a church in which believers know how to communicate with nonbelievers, a church whose public meetings, however full of teachign and discipline they may be, are authentic in all they do, welcoming and warm to strangers, and careful to apply the Scriptures to all of life, with contemporary probings that are simultaneously faithful to Scripture and culturally penetrating. At one level, that church will be saying that you have to become a Christian to belong; at another level, that church will be so authentic in its communication, so warm in its acceptance of people as people, so genuine in its belief and conduct, that outsiders will be attracted.... Christians in such a church will gradually learn, out of sheer love for people, to try to get across with winsome gentleness, what the Bible says, while refusing to soft-pedal the Bible in any way." - D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church

What a challenge.