“The temptation we face is to compromise the cost of discipleship, and in the process, the Christian identity can get lost. We don’t want folks to walk away. We’re driven by a sincere longing for others to know God’s love and grace and to experience Christian community. And yet we can end up merely cheapening the very thing we want folks to experience.” (p.92) How has your church wrestled with being sensitive to seekers?

“I asked participants who claimed to be ‘strong followers of Jesus’ whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.” (p 99). Do you or others in your church spend a significant amount of time with people living in poverty?