Week 8- Classmate Post on Harmony's blog for Week 8 Wednesday Class reflection

Somewhat of a Disagreement:
"People need to go out into their communities and bring people in and just be social with them. Churches need to have the intent of understanding and simply being kind and loving—without the intent of getting something in return."
I don't really disagree with you that much Harmony, but I do think the above statement can be critiqued and moderated. For instance, Professor Bolger has made a good case during class that our intention as Christ followers is not merely to "bring people in", but is in many ways to enter into their reality and in this way bring our community to the "people". There needs to be real discussion about how helpful it is to the people we "reach" and to ourselves to extract individuals from their world to bring them into ours.
EXTENDED THOUGHTS:
Also, I don't know that the mandate to simply be "kind and loving" sufficiently describes Christ's commands to us. It seems that much of what we are called to do is to avoid the temptation of simply being "nice" and to act as prophets who challenge the status quo and call for repentance. Of course, our crying out for repentance needs to happen after we have repented ourselves and while we are pursuing relationship with the community around us; but at some point we have to become "not so nice" and wake people up to their own self-destructive behavior.