[Freedom]

I agree with Lisbon. To those in the LC, the whole goal of their “preaching the gospel” is to proselytize people. This is fairly evident, and I think those in the LC are the only ones who would really deny this. I don’t believe that the act of proselytizing automatically means that they preach another gospel, I think it means that they are more likely to preach another gospel. To be fair, many other groups are concerned with do this too, so it isn’t indicative of anything in particular.

When it comes the various LC “outreach” groups (Christians on Campus, BFA, etc.), the goal is always the same, to recruit new LC members. The common goal is obvious to anyone who knows anything about these groups. The problem that I see is that sometimes they make recruitment a bigger concern rather than actually preaching the gospel. I have seen situations where this is so much so, that preaching the gospel is hardly a concern at all.

An example that comes to mind is when a few of us were trying to invite someone to a home meeting. This person didn’t seem comfortable with the idea and asked if it was okay to come on Sunday instead. As per LC policy, “new ones” are not really supposed to come to a Lord’s Table meeting for their first meeting, so we told him “no”. This didn’t go over well, and eventually we said he could come to a meeting on Sunday. By that time it was too late, it was already a lost cause. The whole issue was pure politics, us trying to do things the “right” way, and we were trying to maximize his potential as an LC recruit, by starting him in the “shallow end”. I later realized that in all this I had never concerned myself with whether he was even saved or not. Obviously preaching the gospel should have been a primary concern, but it wasn’t, it had become the least important issue of all.