21. Engage Rather Than Exclude

The Christian Statement

The confrontational church's default mode is exclusion. Define the boundary. Enforce the standard. Keep the community pure by ensuring that those who do not meet the standard are clearly outside it.

Jesus's default mode was the opposite. He went toward the excluded. He ate with them. He touched them. He crossed the social and religious boundaries that defined who was in and who was out - not to abolish the boundaries but to demonstrate that the love of God preceded the enforcement of the boundaries and was the thing that made the boundaries comprehensible.

The church that engages rather than excludes is not the church without standards. It is the church that deploys its standards in the right sequence - after the relationship, not before it. The LGBTQ+ person who has a genuine friend in the church, who has been loved for years without preconditions, who has seen the community's faith produce real fruit in real people's lives - that person is in a position to hear a hard truth that the person who was confronted at the door is not.

Engagement is not agreement. Jesus's engagement with Zacchaeus did not imply that extortion was acceptable. His engagement with the woman at the well did not imply that five husbands and a live-in partner was a model of covenant fidelity. His touch of the leper did not imply that leprosy was not a serious condition. Engagement is the precondition for everything else. It is not the conclusion.

✔ Salt and Light: Ask before you tell. Listen before you speak. Be interested before you are instructive. The person who feels genuinely known and genuinely valued by the disciple is the person who will eventually be willing to engage the truth the disciple carries. The person who feels primarily like a theological problem to be solved will disengage before the truth has been delivered.