making it difficult

James the Apostle said something striking during deliberations on the post-resurrection place of the rite of circumcision. Here it is, from Acts 15:19: ““It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”

That sounds like good judgment to me, and you’d think it would be more like common sense. But making it difficult seems to be a trait of too many Christians and too many churches.

New believers have a challenging gauntlet of behaviors to run, things they’re expected to do but no one ever tells them until they’ve done it wrong. Women who wear tank tops and shorts to worship, or men who bring beer to the church picnic, or children who run in the hallways are soon set straight. The church is the place where everyone is welcome, so long as they behave they we want them to.

To make the challenge even more fun, we sometimes make our faith almost incomprehensible. The church has more jargon even than the Army (although fewer acronyms), so that we can sometimes sound like we’re talking in code. On top of that, we long-time Christians want to be fed meat, not milk (see, there’s some jargon for you), so our sermons dive deeper and deeper into ever finer points of doctrine.

To paraphrase James above, what if we intentionally didn’t make it difficult for new believers, or even just new members in our church? What if we focused on being inclusive and welcoming, and removed all the barriers to participation in our various groups? What if we planned worship to be accessible to new believers as well as satisfying to long-term Christians?

To the extent we do that, we’re a faithful picture of what God’s kingdom is meant to be. If the Jews could let go of circumcision, there’s a lot we can give up too.