Eric Bryant serves as an elder, speaker and navigator overseeing the leadership team at Mosaic in Los Angeles. His first book, Peppermint-Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love (Zondervan), is a reflection of his ongoing pursuit to live his life incarnationally with friends and with strangers. He talks to RELEVANT about this practical approach, which helps Christians see opportunities to be the salt and light in their daily lives.

Explain “party theology.”
Every year at Mosaic, Erwin (McManus) does a message on what we call “party theology.” It’s basically looking at Levi (his name later became Matthew). Not knowing any better, after becoming a follower of Jesus, Levi decided to throw a big party and invited all of his friends who happened to be tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners. Upon the invitation, Jesus went. In turn, Jesus had a horrible reputation because He went to this party; He was known as a drunkard, a glutton, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Although Jesus was neither a drunkard nor a glutton, He was willing to ruin His reputation on behalf of befriending people whom He disagreed with and who weren’t honoring to Him. More so, He didn’t expect people who did not know God to live like they did.

And so for us at Mosaic, every year we would hear about this “party theology,” and we started putting it into practice. It’s simply inviting people into your home whom you would normally never invite. It’s canceling your small group so that you can attend a play because someone in the small group—who does not know God—is in the play. Rather than expecting them to always come to us, we go to them. Party theology is putting the needs of others before our own, in the context of relationship.

Why is love “the new apologetic” (as you put it in the book)?
What I’ve discovered in my conversations with people is that although I’m not a great debater, and I’m not a great theologian in that sense, if I allow someone the context to honestly seek God, they will discover His name is Jesus. They will be shocked. It’s a supernatural, mystical and powerful experience where Jesus becomes real to them. I can’t hit them over the head with enough facts to get them to that point. There are some people who move in that intellectual world, but I think a lot more of us are changed because we encountered Jesus, and we can’t explain how that happened.

We can prove who God is by allowing God to be God in these people’s lives as we are great representatives of Him. This means being real, honest and being a friend. These are people with needs and with a longing to connect deeply with other human beings. For them and this party that I attended, I was just able to be a friend. If I had introduced myself as “Pastor Eric” they probably wouldn’t have let me come into the house. However, after spending the evening at the party and getting to know each other, I developed a friendship such that when there was an openness, I could influence them; but otherwise, when we discard people because we disagree so quickly—all of a sudden we don’t have even a context for a conversation.

While writing about the fading influence of Christianity, you pose the question, "Why does it seem that so many are rejecting Christianity and wanting nothing to do with Christians while maintaining a high level of respect for Jesus?” Our question is: How are they maintaining a high level of respect for Jesus while rejecting His Church?
I think what people are rejecting is what they have heard about, or they reject what they see on TV. They reject the judgmental hypocrisy. They hear stories about fallen preachers, and they hear stories about churches splitting, and they’re not interested in that. They have enough problems of their own in their own life. But they love the idea of Jesus.

Even from a strictly historical perspective there is a real desire to learn how the Son of a carpenter could start a religious movement that would change history and shape so much. I think people are very interested in Jesus. If you read the stories of Jesus and read Jesus’ words, you realize that He’s so loving, He’s so kind, He’s so winsome and such a beautiful person. The catch is, people associate the desire and idea of changing their life—they connect it to the Church, the “to-do” list.

What mattered most to Jesus was people, and I think if we can just be more about who Jesus was and what He taught and just being honest—we are hypocrites; we’re hypocrites in transition. We’re trying not to be, you know? We are absolutely judgmental, but so are people who don’t follow God. We need to be careful about what we’re judging and not expect people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus to live as if they did—when even we are having trouble doing that.