Jay Bakker was at one of the workshops I attended for the men’s retreat our church sponsors this past weekend. He’s a very interesting guy, but he said a couple of things that really rang true with me.

First: Friendship evangelism prostitutes both friendship and evangelism.

To paraphrase how he explained this, “how would you feel if someone befriended you for the sole purpose of converting you to his or her beliefs? You’d feel pretty hurt, maybe angry, wouldn’t you?” Not that there is any problem with befriending people, but what this world needs is people who are committed to loving others.

Second: Love people without an agenda.

Jay feels that Christians have failed, in particular, to reach out to entire groups of people in American culture, e.g. homosexuals.

This is not to say that Jay is a moral relativist. He obviously believes in absolute truth, but recognizes that the sort of way that “modern” Christian evangelists teach this fundamental concept is entirely at odds with the emerging post-modern culture.