Thoughts from the "Friends of YFC" Banquet

I had the great pleasure last night of attending Metro Maryland Youth For Christ's annual "Friends of YFC" Fundraising Banquet. I was extremely encouraged by what I experienced there, and would like to share what I've been thinking about in the hours following the event.

The night opened with the moving testimony of a young man who had recently been saved while on a weekend trip to which his family had all but forced him to go. This same weekend, his three best friends committed a robbery, during which they also murdered someone. His friends are now serving sentences of 15 to 25 years for their crime; this young man would have certainly shared that fate had he not been on the YFC-sponsored trip at the time. Every once in a while, God's plans for our lives are much more apparent than they usually seem.

The keynote speaker for the evening was the Grammy-winning contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith. Smith also happens to be a pastor at a church in Tennessee, and a surprisingly approachable and down-to-earth gentleman. Mr. Smith began his speech by giving a special "hats off" to Hope For The Rejected in front of approximately 1,500 people who attended the banquet, citing our mission specifically as one of great consequence. He also briefly mention Rocketown, a skate park and music venue that he established in Nashville, with a similar goal of reaching youth wherever they may be. I mention this not to bring attention to our ministry, but because I think it is incontrovertible proof that there are people in the mainstream church that really do "get it."

It's all too easy for us [subcultural Christians] to place the blame squarely on everyone else, but I feel that it's high time that we start assuming some of that blame ourselves, or at the very least end the self-pitying complacency. More and more, I have come to realize that my perception of being ostracized from mainstream churches is not rooted in reality, but primarily the result of my own prejudices against those whom I feel are intolerant of me. I don't mean to suggest, of course, that every self-affirming Christian in this country welcomes the pierced and tattooed folks into their church... or even treats them benignly, for that matter. Even if it's not entirely our problem, though, shouldn't we be proactive about it and become the catalysts for the change which we wish to see? The best way to attack the division that we see in the Church and the legalistic and judgmental attitudes that we perceive is to work with the mainstream church, not to separate ourselves from it. We can take steps, even if we are not widely accepted at first, toward realizing our vision of a unified Church that can look past outward appearances and see people as God sees them: inestimably valuable. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:4, "there is one body and one Spirit" (emphasis mine); it's time for this body—the Church—to start working as a whole. This is one of the major issues that we will be discussing at our upcoming Unified Underground conference this fall.