A lot of people who visit churches only come one time, or a couple times. Many people who accept Christ into their lives, will never come back to church. ( I’m not talking about the people who get plugged in to the community) I’m mostly referring to the really dirty people, the hopeless ones with no resources, who live the best they can with the little bit they’ve got, and the ones who love Jesus but can’t stop making terrible decisions.

And… Is it a failure on the part of Christianity that many of those people who we influence so briefly, may receive Christ, but do not receive the message and personality he can show us, representative of God. That is to say, that they leave the church never having learned that Jesus would embrace them in their mess? That he wouldn’t give any judgement for pitted out tshirts, he would hug ‘em up anyways. Dirty, disheveled, perhaps diseased.. Diseased in the flesh… Diseased in the mind. It wouldn’t matter.. So people should get this impression when they visit a church, representative of God’s love, based on the actions of Christ. This is just the way I see it.

I worry for those who get “salvation” but don’t come
back. Do they get immersed in guilt, confusion over God’s wrath/sin etc? And give up on trying to fuse Jesus into their life which they have newly defined as “Sinful” and in need of redemption.

I wish that we would all get the message at church that when we have invited God into our life, to Love us unconditionally, and to redeem us through guiding out if our messes.. That it means we can find God in our heart anywhere we go. Messy, dangerous places do not separate us from Christ’s Love which is working fervently into our hardened hearts. It’s the Good News, people should hear it from us. And they should feel it by our actions towards them. I’m praying that these words will further the things you are saying in your post PB. God Bless. And anyone who has something to add in this regard, please do.

I am praying this will go from my head to my heart and then to my feet.