I still wonder what is 'church' for!

This morning at the churchery, the MC, a rather bright and amusing chap related the following:

He had attended with some other fathers, their sons' school camp.

It ran for a few days, and the fathers joined in as cooks and bottle-washers.

One evening, after the business had subsided, and all the gun-dogs had been fed they got to chatting.

It got to unusually grave topics of current cultural significance:

Injustice (of the old type), the erosion of 'truth' as a concept, the horrors of the constant  denigration of males and so on, through the culture-wars and the real wars. 

My pal, the MC saw many openings for the gospel, but, he admired, he didn't take them!

Would you, dear reader, have been able to?

I dropped in to see the MC, saw he was fixing his old Aston Martin..but no, just doing some repairs on his son's Bentley.

We chatted briefly as he kept working on the car. I left.

I think I know the problem.

Nothing in church life equips us for introducing a 'faith-vector' into a serious conversation. We have no words to fill the gap between 'society is in dire straits' and 'Jesus Saves'.

No talk given in our gatherings goes near to cultural criticism that might equip people to maneuver a conversation.

And we always use 'church-speak' in our gatherings. This provides no 'tools' for guiding thinking to faith.

Here's what I might have done.

"Trouble is, in a world conceived of as only material, who gets to say anything is good or bad, or right or wrong?"

"It just boils down to power, and the power sits at the moment with a nihilistic destructive media, feckless politicians whose only interest is votes...and more power, and a mad grab for cultural hegemony on the part of left-over Marxists."

Then, I'd see where we went.

I'd seek to bring in the diminishing ranks of the 'New Atheists'...ranks diminished by conversion to Christian faith  And Dawkins, Murray and other's preference for 'cultural-Christianity' over any other cultural configuration.

But I don't think they teach that in 'evangelism' class.