Sinner Friendly Churches

I am re-reading Sally Morgenthaler's book "Worship Evangelism." I read it pretty early on as we started New Season Church and it helped to form the vision and direction for worship for us. Sally will be coming to Virginia to speak in a couple of weeks and thus why I wanted to brush up on what she wrote.

She talks in one part of her book about "sinner friendly churches." She asks, "How has the church typically responded to people's mistakes, hurt, and pain? Judgment. Guilt. Yet I do not know anyone who wants or needs more of either."

She then goes on I believe right on target to say, "...what most of us desire is truth in the context of God's unconditional love in Christ." She cites the woman caught in adultery in John 8 where Jesus famously told the women he did not condemn her (THE GOSPEL) but go and sin no more (THE LAW). To use Morgenthaler's phrase this was "God's standard in the package of grace."

And that to me is a sinner friendly church- God's standard in the package of grace. It is a place where I and all of my sinner friends can go that is not overly permissive, overly condemning, but instead offers the Gospel (forgiveness, Christ's love) along with God's standard (a call to repentance and holy living). It reminds me of the idea that God accepts us where we are but never leaves us where we are or Martin Luther's rubric for preaching to balance "law and Gospel."