CARTS, an eccentric community...

If God is always coming to us from outside the boundaries of our faith, beyond our theological building blocks of certitude, of who's in and who's out. Then God is always approaching us as the stranger. Strangers, by definition, are eccentric. In all the shades of meaning. Strangers are different from us. Strangers are on the edges. At the margins. Outside the boundaries and borders. Strangers are Them rather than Us.

Thus, the welcoming of the stranger is an eccentric encounter.

Consequently, a hospitable community will be eccentrically oriented, moving out from the center toward the edges and then past the boundaries to the area "outside" well past our comfort zones.

We encounter Jesus eccentrically, going to find him "outside the gates." Jesus and his disciples, were an eccentric community, and oriented themselves on the edge, and margins of religion and society.

A missional, or outreach community is an eccentric community, a community facing outward toward the stranger rather than inward upon themselves.

The eccentric, hospitable and missional community is not curved inward upon themselves--but is, rather, curved outward in welcome to others. It is metaphorically, and profoundly true, an arc of love embracing the stranger. In this divine embrace, the boundary of separation between " them " and " us " vanishes where we truly recognize our common humanity, the unity of " we " together.