I wanted to start with very simple, ordinary things about radical welcome in the post below because we have a tendency to over-complicate matters right off the bat mostly, I think, as a way of avoiding doing anything but talk. For a number of years I taught a course in an MBA program called Management and Society that introduced budding executives to some principles of ethics. I’ve written elsewhere on some of my experiences with them, and one consistent experience was their desire to leap into questions of the morality of atomic warfare or how to achieve peace in the Middle East. What we really needed to to was begin with examining the moral habits of our ordinary daily lives and the relatively simple choices we make in them. It turns out that that is a very hard thing to do because it forces us to deal with the reality of our own lives as we confront our own responsibility for choices and their consequences.
Radical Welcome Continued
The same thing goes for the discipline of radical welcome as followers of Jesus Christ gathered in congregations and denominations. We are too easily tempted to go off into flights of theological fancy while deliberately avoiding the simple, plain and ordinary things of a daily discipline of radical welcome in the name of Jesus Christ. I’m leaving this thought unfinished because it is up to you to do that for yourself, and I’d be delighted to read what you have to say.