The Gospel Comes With A House Key

In 2019-2020 our Leadership Team is reading The Gospel Comes With A House Key” byRosaria Champagne Butterfield.

Butterfield is hard on American evangelicals. She pulls no punches:

Are Christians victims of this post-Christian world?  No. . .  Our cold and hard hearts; our failure to love the stranger; our selfishness with our money, our time, and our home; and our privileged back turned against widows, orphans, prisoners, and refugees mean we are guilty in the face of God of withholding love and Christian witness. . .  Our own conduct condemns our witness to this world. Shame on us. (61)

Christians are to have our doors open, and we’re to be tactical about building relationships in real-time with real people in the houses next to ours. Not only is this not optional; to do otherwise actively destroys our witness. Butterfield places the moral responsibility squarely on the comfortable Christian’s shoulders—we might be scared and we might be unsure, but we are fully culpable.