Confessions of a Pastor – 6 of 10

My Confession: I enjoy hanging out with people who don’t go to church.

One of the joys of my life is getting to hangout with people who don’t go to church. That doesn’t mean they do not love or believe in God, but they are not the typical church-type.

Some “Christians” only want to be around and hangout with other Christians. To that I just say; to each his own. I have trouble with understanding how you can be a light in a dark world when you are never around the world, but whatever.

Just the other night I got to be the Ring Announcer at an MMA Blue Corner Battle. The place was packed (over a 1,000 people there easy), and the drinks were flowing like honey, and the people were happy and having a great time. And in that environment I get to talk to a lot of people, and when they find out I am a pastor they usually have something to confess to me, or repent for the colorful words that just came out of their mouth. But what is so interesting is that they are typically surprised to find me in an environment like that. Like a pastor (a Christ Follower) can’t do fun things, or be in wild environments and have fun. Jana and I were both there together having a blast, and we didn’t have to drink a thing to have a great time (nothing wrong with drinking a little, I am just reporting).

To all my Christian friends, I encourage you to live a little, get to know people, all people, those who believe, those who don’t believe, those who refuse to believe and those who don’t know what to believe. The honest truth for me and Jana is that we truly love people … all people; we just don’t have partiality when it comes down to it. We love our Christian friends, we love our atheist friends, we love our Hindu friends, we love our Gay friends, we try a just love our neighbors as ourselves the best we can … I hope you do too!

John 4:8-9 says, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him."