Radical Alternative or Relational Hodgepodge

First let me lay a quote on you: "But their success also lay with their experienced life of the Spirit who made the work of Christ an effective reality in their lives, thus making them a radical alternative within their culture." --Gordon Fee

I've been reading another book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God. It is a study of Pauline Theology (that means the beliefs of the Apostle Paul) as it relates to the Holy Spirit. Fee would contend that the Holy Spirit is inseparable from all points of theology covered by Paul, and that to discern any theology apart from the active work of the Holy Spirit is to have no authentic view of Paul's meaning.

At the same time I've been discussing with a friend the Merits and Liabilities of relational and incarnational ministry/evangelism. For those who may not know the terms I'm throwing out let me suffice to say that these forms of ministry/evangelism are concerned with befriending and becoming the gospel in the world for the sake of the world coming to Christ.

I was discussing the role of the Holy Spirit, and what would be called the Pentecostal perspective on Ministry and while I've never made a secret of my Pentecostalism, I've also never made a secret of my discontent with the way many Pentecostals approach Christianity. And here is the rub. Whenever forms become strategies I have a problem. We should not befriend people as a strategy of winning them to Christ. (though I admit I've done this) We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. By virtue of following Christ we should be friends of "sinners". So relational evangelism shouldn't be a strategy it should be discipleship. It's doing what our master teaches.
Enter the Spirit. Fee argues that it was the work of the Spirit that presented the radical alternative for a roman citizen to become a Christ-follower. I agree with that assertion. When examining church history we find that in the expansion of the gospel, the gospel has always functioned best when it is a radical alternative to the culture. What do we offer today? The church in China is exploding as an underground movement because the culture doesn't allow them to worship publicly. We are free to worship whenever and pretty much as loud as we want, but the church in America is dieing. What are we offering that is a Radical Alternative? So people in our culture face a radical alternative to follow Christ, or have we made it an acceptable norm in the midrange between the Conservative Right and Liberal Left? A place where everyone can be comfortable, and no one stops walking on their own path and finds the way that follows Jesus. That I'm afraid is a narrow way, radically different from life as ussual, and there are few that find it.

--Ben