You Gotta Look Like Them to be Relevant?
"I was preaching somewhere in a town of 5,000 people and this guy [who was a street preacher] . . . had earrings and everything and hair all moussed and all this stuff because man, he was working the street. . . . He’s the dude, he’s the man you know, Serpico for Jesus type thing . . . and he’s like you don’t understand, you’re in context, you know, you’re preaching . . . [And I said] look, I worked inner city Dallas, I lived with male prostitutes, alright? And I’ll tell you how I dressed: I wore a pair of blue jeans, tennis shoes, a shirt, and my hair was combed. ‘Cause I want to be honest with you, those guys down there selling their bodies and the other guy’s selling drugs, and the girls dying of AIDS, they could care less whether I looked like them or not. What they wanted was someone who loved them. So that whole idea of you gotta look like them to be relevant–no, you gotta love them to be relevant."
- Paul Washer
- Paul Washer
posted by kennyo at 10:36 AM
6 Comments:
finally! somebody's addessing this issue
Does this cut the other way too? If I have moussed up hair and an ear ring should I have to change my appearance to reach people in a conservative local?
Do whatever you want. The point is, don't be fake.
If you want to hang on to some identity and make it more about that than to reaching the people, you will likely become a hinderance and become ineffective.
Perfect. That's what I think, too. I was just wondering what the curators of the blog think.
Do conservatives need to hear the Gospel too? I thought it was just the street people who need to be told.
It might look more Godly to go to the streets.
Shouldn't the real question be, "was what he was telling the people the Truth and was it spoken in love." God can work through His Truth, regardless of what we look like, but that cuts both ways. If he was speaking the truth, I personally would say, "let him be." Mark 9:38-40.
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