Anyone who knows me well would be surprised to find the words "sports analogy" attached to anything I might write. There is a simple explanation for their surprise, I know next to nothing about sports. I can play sports (basketball and football for a bref stint in middle and high school) but I don't follow specific teams or players, I can't quote statistics, I don't watch ESPN. It isn't that I am anti-sports, it's that no one has ever taken the time to explain to me why they love the games (teams, players) they love and why I should. I'm a guy who loves to have stuff explained to me, I love to get sold on something, I like to know why others like what they like even if they don't sell me. But no one has ever attempted to explain their love of sports to me. Most folks want someone who is already a fan, someone who already speaks the language, not somebody they have to explain things to like a five year old.
I don't bring this up as an angst ridden rant (I am, in fact, content to remain clueless about sports until someone takes me on as a project) but as an analogy to how many of the "churched" approach discussions on faith. Too many of us are looking for someone who already knows the lingo, someone who is already sold on the game. We don't want to have to take someone through the process if it means getting down on their level.
I don't mean that we should condescend or approach people like projects, but we should be more ready to explain why it is we're so sold on this Christianity thing. Hopefully (and this is step one) our non-Christian friends can see that it is important to us, we need to be ready to explain to them why. That means having some understanding ourselves and a genuine and sincere love for what we're sharing. Then it means going back to the basics and patiently explaining what they mean. Like the sports fanatic who takes time to teach his son to throw a ball, this practice can often bring us back to why we fell in love in the first place.
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