Grace through clinched fists?

I've been thinking a lot about grace lately. Not because I have been acting particularly graceful, but because I have been reading a lot about how contemporary society feels about Christians, and as a result, how many/most feel about the church and many about God. In working as a "professional Christian" in a college setting I talk with Christian students everyday, seeking to help them become better disciples of Jesus. I also talk with students who are not followers of Jesus - most who have a negative attitude towards all religions. Much of the negativity they harbor is from contact they have had or their friends have had with folks who claim the mantle of "Christian." My conversations with students and alumni has proven Dan Kimball's assessment a few years ago in the title of his book, They like Jesus but not the church. In trying to find a metaphor to capture what I have been hearing from students on our campus, many of us who are evangelistic Christians seem to be offering grace through clinched fists. We hold the grace of God out for others to see, but when we do we also offer so many rules and restrictions for the practice of faith that we make grace seem impossible to obtain. The fingers of our clinched fists prove to be prison bars, holding grace captive - making it ours to own and control and keeping it away from others who need it just as much if not more than we do. Seems to me that such a presentation of Grace is rather Pharisaical, and thus, sinful. I could quote a myriad of verses here to prove my point, but don't want to overstate the obvious: Jesus offered grace to all people. Why we feel the need to convict others and demand wholesale lifestyle changes before they can accept the loving, freely offered grace of God is beyond my comprehension. In case I misread the Bible, conviction is the work of the God.

I've just started reading two books, Sin boldly: a field guide for grace, by Cathleen Falsani and Lost in transition: the dark side of emerging adulthood, by Christian Smith. Both are disturbing my thoughts and sleep this week. As we seek to reach out to the students on campus in conversations about the saving grace of Jesus and seek to lead the students in our ministry to have spiritual conversations with their friends we face an uphill battle. Students on campus have heard too many canned evangelistic pitches that have impossible strings attached. Many are reticent to engage in serious conversations anymore. Students in our ministry are like those discussed in Lost in transition, who have become so influenced by the contemporary postmodern philosophy that they do not want to talk to their friends about faith because they do not want to impose their beliefs on anyone else.

I live and work in what has been dubbed the Bible-belt. Most students on our campuses are at least familiar with Christianity, though many have not experienced nor claim faith in Jesus. +Vic Doss, a local church-based college pastor realized that most students today don't share their faith because they don't know how and because they have not been shown how. He and some of his colleagues decided to begin taking students on campus to engage in purposeful conversations. They have had great success in modeling healthy evangelism. The result has been thousands of conversations over the past few years with students and faculty members. Vic noted that students are not coming to Jesus because no one is having the conversation with them.

Our students have been giving out coffee on campus one morning each week. They have discovered that most folks welcome the offers of prayer and encouragement offered alongside a free cup of coffee. Many conversations have been started and are ongoing because a few students care enough to spend a few hours a week between morning classes loving on their peers with offers of coffee and prayer.

Let's ponder solutions together.
Let's engage this changing culture in conversations about faith.
Let's encourage honest discussions among our Christian students about their faith and about evangelism.
Let's model for our students ways to have healthy, grace-filled conversations about faith by taking them with us on campus, inviting them along when we go out on campus for evangelistic events.
Let's get out of our buildings and onto campus so that we can interact with students in our ministries and students who have had bad experiences with "clinched-fist grace," talking with them about grace found in Jesus.

What are your ideas?