A Lesson for the Church From the Queer Community

It's Pride week in Halifax and on Tuesday I attended a lecture on the "Queer Community". One of the interesting ideas that came up was that as Homosexuality gains more and more acceptance the movement is loosing steam. The lesson is that if you make the goal of your community the acceptance of your community by the mainstream then accomplishing your communities goal will ultimately be the demise of the community.

We see the same thing when Christianity moves from being opposed to becoming mainstream. In these situations the church, though big, is often at it's weakest. North America is a pretty solid argument for this point. The lesson is this, if we want the churches we are a part of, as well as THE church to maintain it's strength neither our mission nor the motivation behind our activities can be focused on the opposition we invite or our acceptance by, integration into, or domination of the mainstream.

We must become less obsessed with engaging culture and more obsessed with engaging people, we must become less concerned about changing laws and more concerned about changed lives, and we must come to accept the teachings of the master that anyone who truly and radically follows him will never be mainstream. Finally we must set our mission in line with the masters, not the establishment of Christian cultures and nations, not the freedom to practice our religion without fear of persecution, and not even the acceptance of Christianity by the culture makers and power brokers but rather the redemption of all mankind. A movement neither in opposition to or pursuit of mainstream acceptance but rather indifferent to and undeterred by it.