Let me be clear up front:  we are not SETTING OUT to INTENTIONALLY offend anyone.  But at Oak Leaf Church, when it comes to offending a Christian or offending a non-Christian, we’ll offend the Christian every time.  If a Christian gets offended at something we do, he will get mad and go to another church.  If a non-Christian gets offended, he may go to hell.  It’s true that evangelism and discipleship are two sides of a coin, but discipleship begins with evangelism.

Jesus said the healthy people didn’t need a doctor…the sick people did.  Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost, not just babysit Christians.  I know making disciples involves a balance between evangelism and discipleship, but there’s always a tension there.  For me, I’d rather err on the side of getting people out of hell.

This isn’t just something we SAY at Oak Leaf Church; it’s something we try to do.  On Easter Sunday, we gave someone a tattoo on stage.  You will not believe how much grief I got from other Christians about this.  People that didn’t even go to our church wanted to tell me how tattoos were unBiblical (there’s absolutely no Biblical evidence for that by the way).  But I never had ONE LOST PERSON call me about how they were offended.  We did that somewhat controversial thing on Easter because we wanted to go over the top to communicate the Gospel to lost people.

We send out postcards and arm our people with invite cards that often make church people upset.  But our goal with the postcards is not to attract people from other churches.  I’ve never had an unchurched person call me upset because we sent out a postcard advertising a sex series.  We’re not TRYING to make other churches mad…we’re trying to reach people.  Some people don’t get us, or get what we are trying to do, and that’s okay.  But we’re going to be true to our calling, even if there is an offensive byproduct.