Do you see People?

So, I have gotten back into listening to podcasts again.  Mainly just two, Matt Chandler from The Village and Rob Bell from Mars Hill Bible Church.  And strangely enough the kind of issues they are each bringing up are very similar.  What they both seem to be hitting on is our view of the world.  Do we see the world as a movie about us and other people are just subplot characters.  Matt asked the question,  "do you see people" , not just visually obviously, but spiritually emotionally... are you aware that other people exist not only in the way you interact with them.  They have lives, souls and emotions and many times we just see people in the limited way that we interact with them.  My question to the few of you who may read this blog is do you see people? 

so

I believe that i have grossly underestimated the task of blogging. It has been like 3 weeks since my last post and my blog muscles still feel completely worn. I actually have nothing to say at the moment, but you would think after 3 weeks that something would have come up that I could write about, but in reality I got nothin'. Pretty sad.
maybe deep down this was my secret issue about blogging. I knew that i couldn't do it. I don't have the whatever it is it takes to sit down and write something. I just don't. Well at least not yet anyways.

Evangelism

Recently, I have been having an ongoing conversation with many people about church.  Specifically, how our generation is going to engage church.  We are all about community, conversation, loving others, and hanging out.  We enjoy the informal, more relaxed environment.  We like "where everybody knows your name" from the Cheers show.  We are great at accepting people and being honest. We don't like boxes, judgement, closed mindedness, one way answers, or authority.  

This idea of church being more "organic" and relational really appeals to us.  But the big question that I was recently asked was.... what about outreach,"evangelism"?  What about reaching the lost and bringing people to Jesus, being the only Jesus people will see?? all the cute sayings.....  but really... how will we bring people into our communities? How will we feed the poor, take care of widows? Without the institution organizing events, trips and other opportunities for us?  And here is the real kicker for me... for the most part when those events are planned or opportunities presented we do nothing, we no show.  As much as we love talk about loving people, when it comes time to get off our butts and do something we don't.

Now believe me, I know how to argue with what I just said.... that we would rather love people in our every day lives not at some event, that we can love people and meet needs at school, work, everywhere.... and that's true.  but is that happening?

As we move forward with the "organic" movement, how do we reach people that are living without the things we know that they need, those things that make life so good... love, acceptance, honesty.

I am not much of a writer, and for the most part blogging seems a bit silly to me. However, I have seen that it can create and build community. A lot of my friends blog, my family blogs... everyone blogs. I may as well give it a shot.

Josh