Our community is upper middle class, extremely well educated (70 percent have college degrees), socially progressive, politically active, and concerned with issues of social justice. Strategies that work a few miles away in the suburbs fall flat in the city. And as a new church meeting in an elementary school, we’ve had to be creative in reaching out and engaging the community with Christian truth.
One example is “The Skeptics.” Each week is devoted to an important question, such as “Is the universe an accident?” “How do we know what we know (for sure)?” “What is God like (if God exists at all)?” and “What is a human being?” We’ve stressed that skepticism, in the ancient Greek tradition, is not cynicism, but honest inquiry. The search for truth always includes the possibility of a changed mind. The key to the group’s success has been creating an atmosphere that allows a free exchange of ideas (we call it “respectful dialogue”) without forcing a single point of view. It has become a safe place for Christians and non-Christians (even for a self-identified “Jewish atheist”) to raise difficult but important questions.
A second example is a planned series of forums devoted to important social and ethical topics. Scholars from economics, law, medicine and environmental studies (our first was on “Creation Care”) speak on the insights Christian faith offers on important questions. These issues involve concepts like “purpose,” “creation,” “justice,” “evil,” “wisdom,” “equality,” and “beauty”—concepts about which Christianity has a unique and important contribution.
