How Connected Are You, Really?

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.

"Sticks and Stones"

After reading the title, you've probably already finished the rest of the little catchphrase that I made us of for today.  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, or something to that effect.  Of course, we all also know that such a statement isn't true.  We tend to heal pretty well from the injuries of sticks and stones.  But sometimes the injuries of words remain for a lifetime.

That's the power of communication.  That imagined slight that someone sent our way sticks in our mind, turning over and over, festering deep inside.  Or, on the positive side, that good word that someone said to us or about us that rejuvenates us and motivates us to keep going.  In some ways, that simply doesn't make sense.  How can something so insubstantial as a word or a group of words have such a tremendous impact on us?

That's where I remember a few words that a man by the name of John wrote many, many years ago.  "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  God chose to communicate to us human beings through His words, spoken by men like prophets, for a long time.  But the, when the fullness of time had come, God clothed His Word with our very own human flesh and blood.  Now the Word would not be something that merely touched our ears, but could physically touch us, just like the proverbial sticks and stones.

A significant part of the Christian faith deals with the impact of words.  Words tell us what God desires and commands from us, and also show us how we fail to do these things.  Words tell us how God has chosen to rescue us, and the form of that rescue, in His own Word becoming flesh and blood.  And that then gives a greater meaning to us when we think about how else our Lord communicates with us.  Jesus communes with us by giving us His own flesh and blood, to eat and to drink, in the holy supper we celebrate.  If words alone can touch us so deeply, how much more so when those words are connected to a truly physical presence as well?

God communicates with us.  The message He truly wants to communicate with us is that He has rescued us and made us fully right with Him.  Those are the kind of joyful words that give us hope and strength when we face the difficult road that lies ahead of us.

Talking Personally About Faith

Researchers assert that it's a lost art.  In fact, not too long ago, I read an article from a Christian leadership website that made the assertion that most church-going people don't talk about their faith.  Now, anytime I hear statements like that, I wonder what exactly they mean by that.  I think there are levels of faith talk that are important for us to consider, and I can see where researchers may be lead to make assertions like this.

First, there is the level of simply talking about church life.  You go to a church, you like your church, and so you talk with other people about your church.  This is a relatively safe level.  You aren't really getting into anything too personal nor too controversial.  This level of conversation revolves around talk of activities and who attends the activities.  Sure, you may talk about what you learned at one of the activities, but this level still remains fairly generic, in a sense. 

Then, there's the level of talking about why your church does the things that it does.  To use an example, this is where you talk with others about why your church wants to have an active youth group.  You want to help kids out.  You want to provide a safe environment for them.  You want them to grow up and know the faith of their parents.  You're getting a little deeper into reasons, and as you do that, you open yourself up a bit more.  Maybe you don't like the direction, or you think there are other things that could take place that would do a better job.  Maybe the person you are talking to doesn't see it as an important issue.  The deeper you go, the more open you are about yourself.

This previous level is one that we sometimes dive into.  But to take it to the next level is the challenging one, and the one that I would imagine most researchers are actually talking about when they say that people don't talk about their faith.  This is the level at which you explain WHY you believe what you believe.  It's the level where you talk about the specifics of WHAT you believe, and how it impacts your life.  It gets very personal.  It opens you up to the other person.  They can see your motivations.  They see those things that are important to you. 

Now, from one standpoint, it's kind of understandable why church people would be reluctant to go to this last level.  It's very personal, and we tend to only open ourselves up to those that we know, with whom we have developed trust.  But that's also the very thing that is hard to build if we don't open ourselves up to others.  We are afraid that someone might not understand, or that they might see us in a less positive light if we reveal these things about ourselves.  And so, we clam up about talking about what Jesus means to me, and why it's important that I believe He rose from the dead.  We have a hard time talking about the hope that we have in the resurrection.  And as we struggle with that, many look at us and wonder why we have such a tough time speaking about it if it's so important to us.

Maybe we need practice at this.  Maybe we need to take a new approach, that of opening ourselves up to others regardless of what they do with our openness.  And maybe, as we do that, we'll get more comfortable doing it, and our conversations can move from the first level to the last level, and that just might be the means by which God's Spirit works to draw them to Jesus through us.