10 hours from Nashville to Brentwood

Not a good start to the blog action. Got a couple of days of posting and then nothing for two weeks. Way to go, rus.

I spoke with a staff member of my church tonight about local missions. His question is an interesting one. Why will a church pay hundreds of dollars to fly around the world and do missions to people around the world and not reach out to the community around them. His idea was to have people give $2500, drive out to the airport, fly around for ten hours, land, take the rattiest bus, stay in the rattiest hotel and reach out the strange natives of Brentwood. We speak the same language so the cross cultural aspect would be lessened. As I thought about it and as we discussed it, I got to thinking that it requires a change of mindset. We cannot guess that missions is something that only happens in far away lands with far away people who don't speak the same language and that we'll never see again. Perhaps that is the allure: that you'll never see that person again. The social risk is minimized if are "stooping" to help someone who is "disadvantaged." Our community is not "disadvantaged" in the traditional sense. However, I think if we did the work, we would see that the community is searching for community. Suburban isolation has insulated us from others. If we can show them that there is a community of truly loving people. Unfortunately, I think my church has fallen victim to the suburbanization of the church. It's a group of mostly similar good attractive people who think Jesus is nice. It's easy to talk about somebody else's problem, but real community eludes us. If community happened, I think the community would be attracted.
It seems to me that the milleu of the church must be changed to be able to really reach out and accept those who are different: other races, the poor, liberals, homosexuals, even ugly people (although I seem to have fit in just fine), just to name a few.