Loving versus "Reaching"

Every time I hear Christians talk about "Reaching" the "lost" I get a little bit of throw up in the back of my mouth. Why?

You know, I'm around a whole lot of people in a week, lately. My two professions: Renegade Jesus People pastoral brutha, and Unpaid Rep for Effort Skateboards, land me in diverse groups. And one thing I'm getting is--INTOLERANT.

I'm getting intolerant of the condesceding way that well-intentioned, Christianized people talk about people who aren't Christianized... I see more Jesus in a day skating and repping to shops than I see in a week of the sunday schools I used to be supposed to organize.

I see people hanging in there.
I see people holding on for hope.
I see people living their dreams.
I see people sacrificing so others can have more.
I see people who suffer and don't complain.
I see people whose stories contain more danger and sorrow than mine...

and I see Jesus--the One from the Bible--scandalizing well-intentioned (we'll talk about how well, later) genteel folks by totally not judging the profanity and obscenity, depravity and despair, materialism and sensuality, of these people.
he isn't telling them what they already know.
he isn't reaching them with some package of truths...

He is LOVING them.
that means he takes care of them.
he shares with them.
he gives them what they need.
he doesn't "i told you so" them.
he doesn't cold shoulder them if they're gay, or lesbian, or on drugs, or smell bad, or have mental problems...
he also doesn't invite them to some meeting where their life is supposed to change.

so, so many of the people I know already have no problem believing in Jesus, outside the fact that the man just plain never shows up. He is repped by a church system that embodies the very things that Jesus railed on.

what a wierd planet.

So i hate the language of "reaching", when I am experiencing the Jesus of Scripture so much more powerfully among the "unreached" than I have among the "reached". Isn't this language evidence of a mentality? and this mentality... does it embody the Scripture in Matt. 9:12-13?

Jesus said it isn't the insiders that he came for, but the outsiders. In adopting the language of "reaching", and equating success with meeting attendance, haven't we become the very ones for whom jesus did NOT come?

In being "outside" i find: Myself. there. that's where I am.
I'm continually refreshed in my amazement at forgiveness.
I'm refreshed in my appreciation of the Biblical teachings on grace.
I'm broken by the story of the cross...
and the Spirit fills my life, and my mind...

less and less tolerant...

o how the fallen have become mighty.