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On the Road
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 At an event in Seattle just a few days ago I met Matt Casper, an atheist who travels with Jim Henderson discussing how Christianity looks to outsiders. I found Matt to be engaging, disturbing, and funny. Check out the book and video they've done together below.
Earl Creps
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Team Leader, Berkeley Church Planting Project
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Meeting Matt Casper
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 As Jan and I work on developing a campus church plant at Berkeley, one of the questions on our mind is how do we prevent that ministry from losing its sense of mission over time?
We encounter this malady with alarming frequency around the country and have lived it ourselves in the past. Sometimes, everyone in the church has been around for so long they have forgotten the reason for their existence. At other times, things started out well, but the arrival of people attracted to the vibrancy of the ministry brings with it insider values. Also, legalism can take on a variety of subtle disguises, effectively barring outsiders while persauding insiders that they are protecting themselves from corruption.
The usual remedies (training, prayer meetings, seminars) all help, but we know from personal experience how easy it is for a church to drift into a maintenance mode that tends to be more about the fear of upsetting people than the passion for reaching them.
Recently I had a personal experience that gave me some new perspective on the issue of how we stay connected with outsiders: I met Matt Casper.
Standing in the lobby of Eastside Foursquare in Bothell, WA, where we were both scheduled to speak, Matt and I struck up a conversation. He has partnered with Off the Map's Jim Henderson to tour and review American churches. Jim's organization, which promotes relational evangelism, selected Matt as a "friendly atheist" because of his honest, but non-militant attitude.
These two have written a book about their visits to various churches (see below) and now travel together to discuss how insiders and outsiders to the faith fail to connect. Matt provides the first-hand "outsider" perspective. A variety of videos are available online to give you a sense of how they work together in this unusual Christian/Atheist partnership.
Here are a few reflections on my own conversation with Matt:
 1. Outsiders are not scary people: Well, at least not usually. And, truth be told, I've met enough scary Christians to know that outsiders don't have a corner on the market. I found Matt to be very friendly, open, and non-defensive. He had obviously thought deeply about spirituality, and expressed no disrespect for people of faith. He just thinks they're wrong, or, at least, that their perspective is not supported by anything credible. Our talk encouraged me to have more of these talks.
2. Outsiders have issues too: Matt told me about the "existential dread" that goes with being an atheist, but that having children has helped him with the issue. "Not that I live for my kids," he said, but because he now has something larger than himself that will be around long after he is gone. This gives him a kind of purpose which he finds very satisfying. Matt seems to express no felt need to be "saved," but his candid remarks reflected the honest struggle of using unbelief as a foundation for finding the meaning of his life.
3. Outsiders want things to make sense: Matt doesn't hate Christians, he just doesn't believe in the supernatural. One pastor present at the conference, when pressed by Matt, admitted that he believed Matt would go to hell unless he professed Christ. The friendly atheist's answer: "I believe you'll go to Candyland and their won't be any candy for you." He said this without rancor, but with the conviction that the assumptions behind Christianity are something like those of the Flat Earth Society. "It's easier to get into heaven than into college," he observes, noting that college requires lengthy applications, while evangelicals believe heaven is accessible through a simple prayer, or signing a card. Matt is telling me that I have to think as deeply about faith issues as he has.
4. Insiders can talk about their issues too: I mentioned to Matt that his "existential dread" has a companion among insiders that I called "theological dread." Our form occurs when we think we have God all figured out only to discover that our lives don't match the claims that our faith makes. The book of Job is devoted to this sort of crisis. Matt did not pounce on my admission as further proof for the validity of atheism. He accepted my point without much comment at all. So it seems that honesty is not such a bad apologetic after all. It provides common ground on which our conversations can continue.
5. The outsider/insider relationship matters: Matt was surprised by his newfound celebrity among evangelicals, and by the amount of anger he has attracted, especially when communicating with Christians on the internet. However, he did mention one fringe benefit of associating with us: "Now I have to practice what I preach. I have to be patient and understanding." In other words, he now feels compelled to act the way he advises Christians to act toward atheists. Matt helped me to understand that there are powerful forms of influence that don't involve words.
Most of my ministry training did not assume a "Matt" scenario. He taught me that day in the church lobby that there is just no substitute for face to face conversation (not monologue) with outsiders to keep a ministry sensitized to mission.
We develop vision, as Bill Easum has noted, for those with whom we spend time. If we befriend the Matt's of the world, we will pray, study, and work until we see them become insiders.
Be a leader worth following,
Earl
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