016 – How Conservative Presbyterians Neighbored a Lesbian Professor into the Kingdom

Summary: In This Episode: Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith by Rosaria Butterfield. About the Author: Rosaria, by the standards of many, was living a very good life. She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they provided hospitality to students and activists that were looking to make a difference in the world. There, her partner rehabilitated abandoned and abused dogs. In the community, Rosaria was involved in volunteer work. At the university, she was a respected advisor of students and her department's curriculum. And then, in her late 30s, Rosaria encountered something that turned her world upside down-the idea that Christianity, a religion that she had regarded as problematic and sometimes downright damaging, might be right about who God was, an idea that flew in the face of the people and causes that she most loved. What follows is a story of what she describes as a "train wreck" at the hand of the supernatural. Rosaria is an author, educator, mother and a pastor-church planter's wife, living in Chapel Hill, NC. Big Ideas Rosaria's assumptions about Christians --- that they are hateful, ignorant, anti-intellectual, inhospitable, and unneighborly, especially toward those who don't believe as they believe --- were upended by the thoughtful, challenging, inviting letter of a pastor. The growing friendship between Rosaria and this pastor would have been short-circuited and possibly derailed if the pastor had pressured her to "come to church". The posture of her Gospel Neighbors ultimately helped make her aware that her own hospitality, advocacy, and kindness were, apart from Christ, manipulative. The collision of a buttoned-down Presbyterian community and a LGBT community was messy and tearful for all involved. But there is no avoiding this. Gospel Neighboring is messy. Plunder If we want to practice Gospel Neighboring toward marginalized communities, we had better befriend someone like Rosaria who knows what it is like to be in the shoes of those we are seeking to neighbor. We are forgetful of what it's like not to believe. It will ultimately take a community of Gospel Neighbors, and not just a pastor (!), to give expression to what the image of God looks like when it begins to be restored in a variety of different people with different temperaments, backgrounds, and perspectives. Be prepared for a "train wreck" if you follow through on Gospel Neighboring for long enough. Don't enter into Gospel Neighboring unless you're committed to helping clean up the wreckage. After all, you're complicit in the derailing of the train! Even though it's true that new behaviors are the fruit of the gospel taking root in renewed hearts, it is nevertheless true that the Christian life is also one that calls us to obey even before we feel like it --- before the action feels right. This means that our Gospel Neighboring shouldn't shy away from helping pre-Christians and new Christians count the cost of following Jesus. Liberating Good News It is immensely encouraging to realize that a very conservative church community with many idiosyncrasies, but a rich tradition of gospel reflection, could practice effective Gospel Neighboring to a lesbian Women's Studies Professor, and ultimately see her come to repentance and faith in Christ. This story demonstrates that there are strengths of each church community that can be marshaled toward the Gospel Neighboring of people other churches are ill-equipped to reach. The Big Challenge Will we be bold enough to engage people that think in a radically different way than us? Will we be patient enough to practice Gospel Neighboring toward them in a way that cannot be found to be manipulative or underhanded? Will we allow someone to belong before they believe and behave? And when it all happens,