In Lay Terms

Random Ramblings From a Church Nerd

Friday, October 12, 2007

Perception or Reality?

UPDATE - I finally found the article. It's here.

The other night, my Other Half asked me and our roommate which was more important: perception and reality. I had just written my past post, so I quickly said "perception". Our roommate said "reality".

Upon more critical thinking, I think that the important thing is to have perception and reality match one another. The main point of my last post was that if people perceive church-folk to be judgmental and anti-grace, then the reality of us not being so will never matter. However, I also know that we cannot simply put on a face of welcome and grace. The two need to match.

There was an article (that I'm really trying to find on line again!) that said that a new study showed that people perceive Christians to be judgmental and anti-gay. Again, I really want to find it to link to it, but Google News is not cooperating. When I saw the headline, I thought, "Well, duh." Does it really take a study to figure that out? I mean, I realized that, and I am a Christian. This is not to say that all Christians are judgmental (I doubt that any readers here are either), but enough are that we can all get painted with the same brush stroke.

This perception is hurting the Christian church. People don't trust us. I'm not sure we have given them good reason to do so. How do we change our ministry to one of reconciliation between a Church that has hurt people to one that asks for forgiveness for its wrongs and the people it has hurt?

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