"Christians feel useless because the church feels useless," writes Rodney Clapp in A Peculiar People. While the Church struggles to determine its place in a society that is primarily post-Christian, individual Christians face similar struggles, the author contends. For individuals, some struggles include:
What is my place in the world?
Should I talk about what I believe?
Do I have the right to try to convince people to believe what I believe?
The Church as Jesus defined it, the author contends, should be about more than just trying to change our society's politics and trying to restore those elusive family values. The people of God have a deeper responsibility--living out Jesus' plan to reach people with the news that there is something better for those who follow Christ. Clapp examines the condition of the Church throughout history from Constantine to the present and outlines a plan to bring Christians back around to the true purposes of Christ.
Rather than trying to pick fights in the "culture wars," Christians need to spend more time getting involved in the lives of those around them, taking time to listen more than speak sometimes. The key to reaching the culture is the rebuilding of a Christian community, a place where new Christians' faith can be nurtured and they can have their needs met and help meet the needs of others.
"The church largely recognizes evangelism as a crucial, if often neglected, undertaking," Clapp writes. He contends that many Christians who do practice it do so with faulty assumptions about the kind of world they live in. We need to grasp the concept that "evangelism be understood not simply as declaring a message but as an invitation into the world-changing kingdom of God--genuinely proposing the faith usually entails an ongoing relationship, and continuing conversation with those now outside the faith. It definitely entails dialogue rather than monologue."
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