For a moment, think about your typical time going to worship. As you get out of the car and walk into the church, who are the people that you notice? Who are the people that you expect you will spend some time talking with? Now, let's look at a few other questions, and I encourage you to think about these and really be brutally honest with yourself. Are there those that you sort of slink around to avoid? Are there those that you would feel awkward talking with? Are there those that you hope you don't run into? (If we are honest with ourselves, we are going to have some of each of those.)
Now, another vein of thinking. Approximately how many people do you anticipate that, on any given gathering time, you will spend time talking with? Or, perhaps you can think of it another way. Who are the individuals that you will spend 75% of your time talking with? If you are like most people (and chances are, you are!), you will spend a majority of your time conversing with a much smaller group than you might think. Outside of that group, you aren't really sure what to talk about, or you feel some level of discomfort in talking with them or listening to them.
How connected are you, really? If you are like the typical person, you have room in your life for about 8-10 really good, close, deep friendships. You have room in your life for about another 15-20 acquantainces with whom you regularly interact. If we go with the bigger of those numbers, that means that you may have a group of about 30 people with whom you would regularly interact with when you go to worship. Yes, there are others outside of that with whom you will interact, but you will likely spend the majority of your time within that group of 30.
So now think back to the answers you had as you read through the first paragraph. Are they mostly within that group of 30? Or maybe I could ask it this way. If you had to list out 45 people that you know within your gathering of the saints, could you readily list them out and say that you know them pretty well? Chances are, as you get toward the end of that list, you may know the person, but you may not know them well.
How connected are you, really? We sometimes have an overinflated sense of our influence and role within the body. The reality may very well be that we aren't as influential as we think we are. If our gathering is of any appreciable size, we actually may not know more people than we actually do know.
So what do we do about this? Well, that's an answer for another blog post. So tune in tomorrow and we'll start to unpack some of what we can do to be a bit more connected.
Now, another vein of thinking. Approximately how many people do you anticipate that, on any given gathering time, you will spend time talking with? Or, perhaps you can think of it another way. Who are the individuals that you will spend 75% of your time talking with? If you are like most people (and chances are, you are!), you will spend a majority of your time conversing with a much smaller group than you might think. Outside of that group, you aren't really sure what to talk about, or you feel some level of discomfort in talking with them or listening to them.
How connected are you, really? If you are like the typical person, you have room in your life for about 8-10 really good, close, deep friendships. You have room in your life for about another 15-20 acquantainces with whom you regularly interact. If we go with the bigger of those numbers, that means that you may have a group of about 30 people with whom you would regularly interact with when you go to worship. Yes, there are others outside of that with whom you will interact, but you will likely spend the majority of your time within that group of 30.
So now think back to the answers you had as you read through the first paragraph. Are they mostly within that group of 30? Or maybe I could ask it this way. If you had to list out 45 people that you know within your gathering of the saints, could you readily list them out and say that you know them pretty well? Chances are, as you get toward the end of that list, you may know the person, but you may not know them well.
How connected are you, really? We sometimes have an overinflated sense of our influence and role within the body. The reality may very well be that we aren't as influential as we think we are. If our gathering is of any appreciable size, we actually may not know more people than we actually do know.
So what do we do about this? Well, that's an answer for another blog post. So tune in tomorrow and we'll start to unpack some of what we can do to be a bit more connected.
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