Are we the problem?

At Vintage Faith, Dan Kimball is recounting his experiences while shooting a video to go with his upcoming book. Very insightful comments, of which I will cherry-pick a few:

The consistent observation shared was that Christians generally don't want to listen to other viewpoints than their own, and they basically abandon the person if they aren't ready to "receive the gospel" and the Christian then moves on to someone else. This was shared that it feels like (and actually is) showing that as a person, those outside the church aren't really cared about or respected and valued as a human being other then as an evangelistic target or as someone to prove them wrong, and the Christian right.

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Jesus calls us to love. This doesn’t sound like love, does it? Mind you, I’ve been guilty of it too.
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What I am hearing is that people are not stumbling at the cross (yes, the gospel and cross is a stumbling block) but they don't reach that point, they are stumbling over the Christians and the church and the bad experiences and perceptions.

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Yes. The cross should be the stumbling block, not the messenger! Problem is that the messenger frequently hasn’t gotten to the cross themselves. The person being talked to is seen as a “target” so there can be another notch on their gospel belt.

This was brought home to me a few weeks ago in a conversation with someone. To him the conversation was only valuable insofar as it would bring me on board his “gospel initiative.” When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to agree with where he was going, he lost interest in me. How sad. I was interested in how we could learn from each other and become more genuine disciples of Jesus. He thought he had it together; all the gospel was about was “bringing others to Christ.” I never did figure out what happened after that in his mind. The cross wasn’t a strong point in his life or presentation.

“And he said to all, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” Luke 9:23-25 RSV
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