Nancy Beach Talks About the Contradiction of Hope and Reality

At Willow Creek's Arts Conference, Nancy Beach did the morning session…

• Nancy shared her concerns that churches might be talking only about hope and not basing that enough in reality. She played an "outtake" from the Bono interview that Hybels did last summer. In this new clip, Bono said that all music is worship. Maybe worship of self or women, but it is worship. But you have to walk through a door of understanding to really understand worship.
• Nancy continued to say, "Let's not be afraid to wrestle with reality. We must live in the contradiction. We embrace the darkness while pointing toward the light."
• We choose to look for what is right in the world while acknowledging that not all is.
• But all this is for naught if we don't translate that hope to a world that needs it. We tend to stay in our holy huddles rather than follow Jesus' example to be a friend of sinners.
• For a friend of sinners, judgment and condemnation are replaced by mercy and love.
• We can become so consumed with the work of the church that we leave no room for relationships with others outside the church. We become too insulated from the people we claim to care about by spending all our time in church stuff.
• Who are you intentionally building a relationship with who isn't from your church and doesn't have a relationship with Christ? Don't see this person as a target, but as someone you will love. How often do you spend time with them? Is there any room in the rhythm of your week for them?
• Once you walk through the door of faith, you can go in too deeply and stay in too long and forget the people who aren't yet through the door.
• We are called to point people to hope.