The Gospel: A Call to Be Present, Not Powerful

One of the simplest truths about being human is that we naturally talk about what matters to us. If we find a great restaurant, we tell people about it. If we go on an incredible vacation, we share stories. If we love a sports team,we'll talk about them whether they're winning or losing. The things that capture our hearts eventually find their way into our conversations.

That's part of why sharing Jesus should be more natural than we often make it. At its core, sharing our faith isn't about mastering a script or learning the perfect argument. It's about proximity. The closer we are to Jesus, the more difficult it becomes to keep His love, grace, and presence to ourselves. We speak about what has changed us.

In Acts 4, Peter and John stand before the religious leaders after healing a man in Jesus' name. The leaders are frustrated and want the message to stop spreading. Yet Scripture says they recognized that Peter and John had been with Jesus. Not that they were highly educated or that they had all the right credentials. They had simply been with Jesus.

When they were commanded to stop speaking about Him, their response was simple: "We are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard." Their witness flowed from relationship, not obligation. They weren't trying to win an argument. They were sharing what had transformed them.

I think most Christians understand why we're supposed to share Jesus. What often trips us up is how. Some of us grew up around forms of evangelism that felt more like sales presentations than relationship building. Others have become so hesitant that we barely talk about our faith at all because we may be ashamed of how it is being presented by Christian nationalists. Somewhere between those extremes is the example Jesus gave us. He moved toward people, sat at tables, listened to stories, and crossed boundaries. He chose proximity over separation.

When I read the Gospels, I'm struck by how much time Jesus spent with people the religious establishment wanted to avoid. Tax collectors, lepers, foreigners, and those living on the margins all found a place in His presence. He never seemed worried that being near them would somehow compromise Him. Instead, His love transformed the spaces He entered.

That reality feels especially important right now. Many people have encountered a version of Christianity that seems more interested in power than people. The gospel becomes tangled up with politics, nationalism, and culture wars until it's difficult to tell where Jesus ends and ideology begins. But Jesus never called His followers to build a Christian nation. He called us to embody the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God isn't advanced through control or coercion. It grows through love, service, and faithfulness. Jesus consistently moved toward people who had been excluded, and He invited His followers to do the same. He never instructed us to dominate culture. He instructed us to love our neighbors.

As we approach Pride month I find myself especially aware of  the experience of far too many  LGBTQ+ people who have a lived experience where the Church has not felt like a place of welcome. Instead, it has often felt like a place of suspicion, rejection, or judgment. Whatever conclusions we arrive at theologically, we should be troubled whenever people experience Christians as more interested in fixing them than knowing them. Too often we've approached people as projects instead of people.

Jesus never did that. He encountered individuals before He encountered issues. He saw human beings before He saw categories. He built relationships before He challenged assumptions. Repeatedly, He communicated dignity to people who had been taught to expect rejection.

Somewhere along the way, many Christians became convinced that our primary responsibility was changing people. But that job belongs to the Holy Spirit. My responsibility is to love people, listen well, build relationships, and remain faithful to Jesus. The Spirit is perfectly capable of doing the Spirit's work without my help.

I recently visited Sardis in modern-day Turkey. Behind the massive Temple of Artemis, you find the remains of a Christian church. It is believed that for a period, these two communities existed side by side. What struck me wasn't their difference. It was their proximity. The church didn't run away from the culture around it but chose to embraced caring for, serving, and being present in the lives of their neighbors. 

That experience reminded me of one of my favorite illustrations. My wife makes incredible chocolate chip cookies. When she mixes the ingredients together, most of them disappear into the dough. The flour disappears. The sugar disappears. The eggs disappear. But the chocolate chips remain distinct. They're mixed throughout the entire cookie, touching every part of it and influencing its flavor, yet they never stop being chocolate chips.

That's us.

Followers of Jesus are called to be fully present in our communities while remaining rooted in Christ. We don't withdraw from the world, but we don't try to control it either. We live among people. We love people. We build friendships. We become part of neighborhoods and workplaces and communities. We influence those spaces not through power but through presence.

People are not projects or target; they are image-bearers of God worthy of dignity, respect, and love. That includes people who vote differently, believe differently, and live differently than we do. It includes LGBTQ+ people, those carrying wounds from religion, and those who have spent years wondering if there is a place for them at the table.

The more time I spend with Jesus, the more convinced I become that the Church should be known less for who it excludes and more for how radically it loves. Not because truth doesn't matter, but because love is how truth becomes visible. The world doesn't need more Christians trying to win culture wars. It needs more Christians willing to sit at tables, listen to stories, serve their neighbors, and trust the Holy Spirit.

It needs more open chairs. And it needs more followers of Jesus who are so rooted in His presence that they simply cannot stop speaking about what they have seen and heard.

Because the gospel was never meant to be a weapon. It was always meant to be an invitation to draw near to Jesus, to experience grace, and to discover that there is room at God's table for everyone willing to come.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Separate in The Mixing

By Pastor Rob Townshend

Smells beyond description,

a room waking under the slow alchemy of heat and hand;

where ordinary things are folded together,

and nothing remains as it began.

Ingredients gather,

simple and unnamed in themselves,

yet each refusing to be unimportant.

Together they become more than themselves,

one note rising, steady and clear.

In the turning of bowls and the work of flame,

what was separate begins to loosen.

Heat does not erase but persuades;

drawing out what could not be known alone,

pressing them into one shared becoming.

And still, a presence remains within the mixture.

Not apart in pride,

but held in the fire as witness;

like hands that stay in the work,

steady while everything changes.

They do not compete with the whole.

They hold it differently;

awake inside what is being made,

faithful where everything is changing.

Their difference is not distance, but faithfulness;

a clarity within the blending,

a life that keeps pointing beyond itself

while still fully in the fire.

Nothing is wasted in this fire.

Nothing is held outside the process.

And so, what emerges is not simply flavor,

but a quiet testimony:

that in the hands of the Maker,

even the smallest life becomes a place where grace is learned;

not announced but tasted.