this is generally true for those who have no interest in an authority for living outside of themselves, but it isn't true for those non-Christians who have lived their lives by their own wisdom, or by their own lusts, and finally ran out of gas and discovered the folly of it all. I know a number of people who became Christians (into Baptist and Charismatic churches) out of non-Christian/non-churched backgrounds simply because their lives had hit the wall and that recognizing that there was an authority higher than themselves found in the God of the scriptures was way more appealing than living their directionless lives.
>> this is generally true for those who have no interest in an authority for living outside of themselves, but it isn't true for those non-Christians who have lived their lives by their own wisdom, or by their own lusts, and finally ran out of gas and discovered the folly of it all. <<
Well, God knows you find a lot of newly converted evangelical prisoners in rehab centers and prisons. And healing the broken-spirited and desolate is certainly foundational to Jesus' ministry; I won't minimize the benefit to society of these reclaim-the-lost churches. But I think a church has to be more than a coalition of the desperate, and there's a lot of room between having no interest in living outside themselves, and desperate for any authority to believe it.