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If you step back and look at what we do here every Sunday, it may seem a little strange.

A room full of people sits in silence while one person talks for half an hour. We stand together and sing songs often written centuries ago—sometimes in key, sometimes hoping God values enthusiasm over pitch. We share bread and wine, insisting that this small, tangible meal ties us directly to the life, death, and resurrection of a Palestinian carpenter executed two thousand years ago.

From a certain perspective, it is strange. And I wonder if that may be a great strength, culturally.

We increasingly live in a culture where Christian faith is not the default backdrop of life. For most younger people, church isn’t a familiar tradition they rejected; it simply isn’t on their radar. Some have walked away after being burned. Others are drawn to spiritual depth but are deeply allergic to religious institutions. Plenty aren't convinced God exists at all.

Yet underneath the cultural fatigue, an appetite remains. In a world defined by algorithmic isolation and disposable trends, people are starved for things that feel rooted, durable, and genuine.

For us, we face a challenge not to treat evangelism like a transaction. In our flesh, we may assume sharing our faith means correcting divergent opinions on contact, winning arguments before earning trust, or weaponizing hospitality into an ambush Bible study. But what if we simply started with a life of love?

Live reliably. Keep your word. Invite people into the unpolished corners of your regular week—grocery runs, yard work, a backyard fire, or a Tuesday dinner where nobody is performing. Be a loyal friend with no hidden agenda. When trust is earned, talk candidly about why Jesus matters to you. Until then, let people experience Christianity embodied long before you ask them to analyze it explained.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-8 But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

The early church didn't spread across the Mediterranean through clever branding. They lived a shared, counter-cultural existence. They pooled their resources, opened their tables, cared for the sick during plagues, and took in abandoned infants. They lived as though the resurrection was a stubborn historical fact that had fundamentally reordered reality.

We can live like that, too. We can sit with someone’s grief without offering tidy cliches. We can celebrate their wins, remember the names of their kids, and invite them over without an ulterior motive. We can learn to love the way Christ loves us.

1 Peter 2:11-12 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

We belong to an odd community that insists death doesn't get the final say. We choose forgiveness over retaliation. We welcome the poor, the lonely, and the outsider to the center of our lives. We treat our possessions as borrowed goods, pray for our enemies, and believe God entered human history, absorbed our violence on a cross, and walked out of a tomb.

Of course it’s strange. In a world where it feels like everything is optimized for profit, packaged for consumption, and thrown away, a community that refuses to live that way stands out. It is an outpost of the kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, in sickness and in health. This is what it looks like to follow our strange rabbi.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”