Loving people who are hard to love involves perseverance. It is going to require a lot of prayer. We need to pray for patience in dealing with them. We need to pray for wisdom in handling them. We need to know when to speak and when not to speak. We need to ask the Lord to show us when to be gentle and when to be more forceful. We are going to need our people to pray these same things along with us. If the church is to welcome the stranger and outcast, it is going to involve the church getting used to feeling uncomfortable. That is going to require a great deal of grace and wisdom from above.

We’ve all had them. Those awkward, tricky customers who turn up to your church. They seem to like being around Christians, or at least want to be around them for some reason, but they prove to be fairly disruptive to your meetings. Maybe conversation is continually dominated by them, they keep bringing things back to their particular hobby horse, or maybe they are seriously disruptive rather than just being a bit awkward.

I’m not talking about unbelievers who come and, periodically (even frequently), ask questions. I don’t mean those people who are either genuinely searching, or taking tentative steps of enquiry, and the questions they ask are real ones. I am talking about people who want to dominate all that goes on, who suck time and attention continually to themselves, who ask questions – not because they’re really seeking – but because they want people to look at them.

What do we do with this sort of person? In no particular order, here are some suggestions.

Love them

For whatever reason, the Lord has brought them into your church. They may have led them into your home group (or, whatever you call them). For good or ill, they’re there because the Lord put them there. And, as far as I can see, there aren’t any awkward blighter caveats put on the Bible passages about loving either the lost or the brethren.

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