Only when we have come in touch with our own life experiences and have learned to listen to our inner cravings for liberation and new life can we realize that Jesus did not just speak, but that he reached out to us in our most personal needs. The Gospel doesn’t just contain ideas worth remembering, It is a message responding to our individual human condition. The Church is not an institution forcing us to follow its rules. It is a community of people inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its tables. Doctrines are not alien formulations which we must adhere to but the documentation of the most profound human experiences which, transcending time and place, are handed over from generation to generation as a light in our darkness.
—Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out
For what purpose would we reach them? Those who are in churches who desire to force their rules on others have little in common with real churches. For the outsider, we reach them by our actions. “See how those Christians love each other!”
JKM+
So how do we reach people/churches who do live as if it is “an institution forcing us to follow its rules”?