Not sure your point... worship services are planned events and people come to worship God and hear the message. All our welcome. We have frequent "guest" speakers who deliver a message to the congregation.

I don't think Jesus, coerced people to listen to Him. However, like Jesus, if anyone including a homeless man showed up on the patio (we have huge patio, where members gather between services and started sharing a message, he would likely be allowed to do so, as long as the message was not offensive to children and the person was not violent.

We have had some people do that in the past including homeless people rant, but in every instance, I think they had some mental health issues, since they were pretty incoherent. Given we allow these people to rant, someone delivering an inspiring message would certainly be welcome.

You will note that Jesus did not "teach" within the Temple but rather on the steps or other locations. This was a common practice at the time and many people would speak "from the steps" of public buildings and people would stop to listen.

While strangers have been welcomed to attend our services, use our facilities, and even rant on our patio, it is unlikely we would allow them to hijack our services or use our religious items like the communion cup, baptismal, etc, without knowing their intent.

We do have a small chapel that we have made available to other groups to use. A Hispanic group uses it every week to hold their own religious services in Spanish, since our services are in English. We encourage the Hispanics in that "church" to join us twice a year for Christmas and Easter in a joint service, but it quite a production, since everything said has to be repeated... in some cases in English in others in Spanish.

Christians are imperfect and I have no doubt that some harbor racist beliefs. But I am really surprised, that you were an elder at a church that wrestled with whether to baptize a black man.

Historically, my current denomination does not have many American blacks. Most of the blacks in our church come from Africa or Carribean. Just like most of the Asians in our Church come from Korea. But that is less race and more culture related.

When I attended a Baptist church, we had more American blacks as members. Meanwhile, my son is married to an African woman, and they attend a church that is majority black.

I don't doubt there are some "country club" churches especially in parts of the country where the "church" is the social center of the community. But in most of the places, I have lived we are more interested in attracting new members than what they look like. In some respects, we have been too inclusive. I don't care much about what people look like on the outside or even the particular sins they struggle with, but some people join our church not even believing there is a God, or the Bible being at least inspired by God. They join because they want their children to be exposed to Christian values.

I am a bit conflicted by that, since I believe "church" is primarily a place that Christians gather to worship God, learn about God, and find ways to serve Him. When to many people are there simply for the "benefits", it can water down a church's effectiveness to serve to God. On the other hand, having some people come on board to take advantage of the benefits is fine, since hopefully they will come to realize those "benefits" flow from a loving God and embrace a relationship with God.