Inspired from an old post originally on Jewcy.com

I live in the Bible Belt, so I know a thing-or-two (or twelve) about the Religious Right in this country. The one thing I know for sure: they sure are smart.

Am I saying that I want to leave the Chosen People for Protestant Paradise? No! But I do have to give credit where credit is due.

The evangelicals in this country are amazing communicators, sales people and networkers. All the things that Jews pride themselves on being, Christians have managed to do, times one-thousand. And it’s time that we learned the secrets of the Christian world, in order to better improve things for our slice of society.

What I have done is laid out ten things that I watch my Evangelical neighbors do, that I feel would strengthen the Jewish community. Call it, “Habits of Highly Effective Hebrews.”

Free Breakfast: if you want to see the smartest Christian ministry inthe world, visit www.freebreakfastchurch.com. The site of The Courageous Church (an urban, contemporary evangelical ministry),”Free Breakfast Church” offers free breakfast every Sunday, open to the public. You are invited afterwards to attend services, but are not compelled. It’s better than one of those Timeshare Condo deals! And it works. The church is growing like a wildfire.

You’re probably thinking, “hey jerk, synagogues do this on Shabbat all the time!” But remember, synagogues are only doing it on Shabbat. There are other times when people need to eat. So why not do a middle of the week pancakes and minyan?

Having Some Pride: an annoying thing about the Christian Evangelicals: they’re just so full of themselves. And darn right for it. They think they have the monopoly on the afterlife. Wouldn’t that make you feel proud, too?

Jewish pride is a strange thing. We’re proud about surviving Hitler and our kugel recipes, but you never see Jews openly talking about the transformative experience of lighting a menorah or watching your child’s bar/bat mitzvah. Christians will go on for hours about how great Jesus has been in their lives. Jews  will go on for hours about how they saved money on their car insurance. The bottom line is that we need to make Jewish spirituality so magical that it makes you bust apart at the seams.

Make Denominations Irrelevant: luckily this is already happening, although the different “brain trusts” in the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist movements are trying their best to combat it. The Evangelical movement is decentralized, yet they talk about “The Church” as if all Christians, regardless if they go to Faith Harvest Ministry or Harvesting Faith Ministry, are a part of one body.

Jews tend to pick their shul based on family background, location, whether or not they feel like they “fit in” with the congregation and if the synagogue addresses their issues the way they want them to. But in reality, the distinction between Conservative and Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal is blurred beyond belief. This will help us a lot by getting more Jews involved in fewer congregations. This concentration of power, with the right tools and leadership, could create a Jewish Spiritual Renaissance.

Getting Involved: it’s all about Tikkun Olam, baby! The problem is, when we try to repair the world “Jewishly”, our Jewishness tends to overshadow the good we are trying to do. Saving Darfur is great, but relying on Holocaust guilt and the local Jewish museum to help is not the way to do it.

If you look at Christian ministries that work in social activism, the heart of “why” they do it is the love of G-d. When you look at why Jews do social activism, it seems to be less invigorated. We do things because it’s “the right thing to do” but this doesn’t have the spiritual power that it needs to convey the importance of the mission. Instead of saying, “Jews believe in Tikkun Olam, so we started an anti-hunger program, hope you like it”, Jews should say, “G-d commands us to feed every poor person in the world. By donating to the food bank, you are doing G-d’s will on Earth. Would you like to be a part of G_d’s plan?”

Reach Out To People: Jews have this bizarre “if we build it, they will come” attitude about houses of prayer. We somehow think that if we create a congregation and let Jews know about it, that people will naturally come in. Once we have them in, we just worry about keeping them there.

Christians see it differently. They see any opportunity to get-the-word-out about their church as some kind of divine mandate. When I go to the county fair, I’m surrounded by church booth after church booth, many of the same Southern-Bapti-Costal blood. But they push and push to make themselves known.

Jews, traditionally, don’t care. We get some families together, pool some money for siddurim and oneg, and hope to one day have a building with a Judaica giftshop and day care center.

If we really cared about what we are doing, we’d get out there more! So many secular, atheist and unaffiliated Jews would have interest in what your synagogue had to offer, if only you would throw them a rope. People don’t often go “searching” for a spiritual home. Often, it takes a caring person to bring them in.

So my question to you is, which of these habits are you going to pick up?

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