What Does It Mean to Be Radical?

Last night, I had an interesting conversation with my pastor, who pointed out that people have left our local congregation for being too radical.  Then I realized we had very different (or are they so different?) ideas of what radical means for a congregation.

I suggested that although we're a radical congregation, as congregations go, we're not really radical in terms of our behavior.  We're not sheltering people in the country who don't have the proper papers and are in danger of being deported.  We're not chaining ourselves to detention centers to prevent their operation.  I thought of the Christian martyrs like Dietrich Boenhoeffer who decided that assassination was the morally correct response to his own desperate times.

My pastor, on the other hand, is deeply aware of what he would not be allowed to do in other churches.  We have a variety of charity and justice initiatives, even if we do not have many children in our pews.  We could try to start programs to attract young families, but my pastor has decided to lead the church in becoming more of what we already are, rather than twisting ourselves into pretzel shapes to attract those who aren't with us yet.

We are also a radical church in terms of whom we welcome.  It was at this church that I got to know a  transitioning, transgendered person for the first time.  It is at this church that we have a Muslim woman joining us.  We don't perform many marriages at this church, but we would marry people of the same gender.

I've been part of this church for almost a decade now, so I forget how radical these actions are for an organized church.  It's these social issues that are tearing many individual congregations and institutional churches apart.  It shouldn't surprise me--and it doesn't--to find out that people have left our church because of this direction of radical hospitality that we have taken.

But still, I wonder, is it enough?