A pastor walked into a local Starbucks locally (no this is not the setup of a joke) and orders a drink. The guy behind the counter (who happens to be gay) gives him the drink in a new fancy eco friendly cup.

"What's up with the cup?"

"Oh, with that special coffee comes our new special eco friendly cup."

"Could I get a different cup that doesn't make me look so gay?"

So the pastor gets his coffee in a new cup and sits down. The Starbucks guy decides to not just let it sit, tells the pastor that his comment was offensive and that Starbucks has deep roots of supporting alternate lifestyles.

Opportunity to generate dialogue, right? Opportunity to show love?

Nope. The pastor calls the manager and demands that the guy gets fired for making him so uncomfortable.

We are always the church. You are always a pastor. Be slow to take an offense, be quick to act out of love and tenderness. Don't allow the sin to happen as if it's not sin, but don't build up a wall because of the sin.

I'm in the middle of Dan's book. Good stuff. I taught on this subject last week at our 20's and 30's group meeting while our pastor was away. I used some good stuff from Tim Steven's book Pop Goes the Church as well. We need to realize how often we hate and don't love.

I'm tired of hearing it too, that's why I posted it so people will wake up and begin to love more, hate less.

It's time that we become more transparent, admit we don't have it all together...and stop being so judgmental.

A huge pet peeve is how the church beats up only the sins we are not committing. We point out the sin of homosexuality, getting drunk, and watching porn...but do we also talk about greed, gossip, overeating?

It's easy for a married couple to now point out that premarital sex disappoints God. It's harder for a married couple to admit that they struggle with respecting their spouse.

While we tell people that it's awful for people to smoke we invite overweight people to a church potluck.

It's time we take the plank out of our eye...we'll see more clearly that way.

Oh and do check out Lex's followup post...it's good stuff too.

I started to comment and then I started to write a novel, so I moved the party to my place. In short:

Okay. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me because I work part-time in a church and I'm really involved in ministry and really into the Christian thing. But - and maybe it's just me - I'm getting kind of tired of hearing this, honestly.