Community and Connection Revisited

It’s enjoyable for me to write about Community, because it allows me to process my thoughts on something that I’m responsible for as a professional. It’s different for me to write about Community than, say, sports, because I have no professional relationship with the sports world and no one’s expecting productivity out of me when it comes to sports (except possibly my flag football team, Shiner Time). 

As I’ve been in and out of meetings with our Young Adult staff, various gatherings of other ministries and staffs within our church, and just hanging out with young adults, I get the feeling that Community is a very ubiquitous yet elusive term.

I don’t have a lot of depth or an amazing arsenal of words; nor have I come up with a great method of working up to my main thought, so I’ll just say it:

There’s a difference between community and connection. Often when we say ‘community’ in churches what we’re really talking about is ‘connection.’ We can absolutely (and should) program connection. I’m not convinced we can program community. 

Community, especially in our cultural context, may be something we have to disciple into our young adults the way we’d attempt to “disciple in” a missionary mindset or compassion for the least of these. The problem with this is, of course, the problem with a lot of supposed discipleship–how can I instill something I don’t have? I’ve got to start exploring the concepts of community through dependency, forgiveness, time, and proximity.

Dependency: We have to learn to lose ourselves. We have to let go of stuff and let others invade our space, the way God invaded (sorry for the crass terminology) Creation in the form of Jesus. If we can’t learn to depend on others, we’ll never experience Community.

Forgiveness: This is a natural follow up to Dependency. Why? Because people will let you down. Forgiveness isn’t easy, exactly for the reason we must do it. Forgiveness betrays our sin-nature, and we must learn that our value is found in our Creator and how he loves us first and foremost. By learning to forgive others we open ourselves up to a whole new realm of accepting God’s forgiveness and community.
 
Time: My Twitter starts to send messages to my cell phone at 7:00 a.m. That’s just under 2 and 1/2 hours ago. And I’ve already found out what’s going on in the lives of 6 of my good friends, none of which are involved in any sort of “community group,” small group, or accountability cell. Am I experiencing Community or Connectivity through Twitter? Obviously I’m experiencing Connection, but am I experiencing Community? I would say yes. Here’s why: Connection is a natural door to Community. However, without Time, that door will be shut quickly. I actually experience a sense of Community through Twitter because of the time I have invested in those connections. On the other hand, I haven’t spent nearly as much time invested into those I’m supposed to be attempting Community with. Interesting…

Proximity: Here’s where social environments can fail us, though I’d be open to an argument that they don’t fail us here. There’s something about sharing life together which requires that we eat in each others tables, take walks together, and enjoy a pint while talking about sports and marriage and life face-to-face. Maybe I’m just a purist? But seriously, Proximity is Time’s natural complement. They go hand and hand, and without the Web 2.0 we wouldn’t even have to separate them.

We absolutely need community, not just to grow our churches or spread the Gospel, but because it recovers something vital about what it means to be human, what it means to Live well. 

Change Required Here

Wednesday I’ll board a plane to Long Beach, joining about 40 lay leaders and church staff from HPPC at a missional church conference with Alan Hirsch.

Is it possible to recalibrate an old, institutional church? Most of these “missional” churches we’ve studied in preparation for the conference are less than 10 years old, and they were created with a missional strain in mind.

I don’t think it’s impossible, but I’ve been worried about one overwhelming question:

Can you get people to think differently about the entire scope of church without getting them to rethink what they know about God?

Because inaction and institutionalism have been hallmarks of the past century, isn’t that intricately linked to a particular view of God?

I don’t want to point fingers, I’m just being honest…

Church Basement Roadshow

I kind of wish I was going to be in town for this:

Though I will be happy to be in Panama City Beach, FL……

Good food and good times

As Lars pointed out on my Twitter the other day, most of my posts are about food. Sad but true.

Today for lunch, I went with several other employees at HPPC to the Twister Root Burger Company for a delicious buffalo burger and some homemade (that’s right, homemade) root beer. Travis and Rachel joined us, two married (to each other) young adults who work at the church but are leaving in a few days so Travis can take on a new role in ministry in east Texas. I haven’t had much time to get to know them, but I can honestly say I’m sad to see them go. Travis made everyone at the table (all 7 of us) go through a routine he, Rachel, and their daughter go through at the dinner table on a nightly basis. We had to answer three questions:

1. What was the best thing about the past month (they say “day” at the dinner table)?
2. What was the worst thing about the past month?
3. What could you have done to make it different (the bad, assuming you wouldn’t change the good)?

Of course we all resisted the activity at first, then found it to be pretty healthy (almost therapeutic…). It just seemed smart to talk that out, even if it was slightly trite or occasionally repetitive. What I realized is that the last question seems generic, but it’s easily the most insightful of the questions. Why? Because Travis didn’t make us answer that question, but I was trying to think through the responses of everyone at the table. And the truth is, most every time the answer is just about perspective. If we would learn to look at it with different eyes, perhaps with more compassion, grace, or love, then those “problems” would seem small. Most of the relative discontent in our lives originates with our perspective. Good times at Twisted Root.

*****

This morning I had two breakfast meetings (my life obviously does revolve around food), and the second was with my friend Lars. We talked some about ministry in general, about youth ministry and college ministry, about churches and parachurch organizations. It was light but good. Ever since my last wonderful job working with campus/college ministry, I’ve wrestled with the attractional paradigm. I always come back to realizing that there are parts of it that are necessary, but I wonder if we make it more needed than is helpful. The truth is, you can find purported benefits in anything. So if I want to make big, attractive worship services and high-energy, messy games valuable, I can do so. But I wonder if heavy attractional ministry adds an extra wall to authentic discipleship? What I mean is that, after we’ve gone through all the trouble “just to get them in the door,” have we then set up a new barrier that needs breaking down that didn’t exist in their pre-ministry state? Like Keith said today when I brought the topic up on the way to lunch, this means we set up expectations that I’m going to make you happy before I can tell you truth. As in, “have fun, enjoy the games free food, and now can I have 5 minutes to tell you about Jesus?” It derails the expectations of a relationship, making the minister the spiritual equivalent of one of those big wedding shows where they give away trips and free tvs to try and sucker you into joining some “exclusive” club that gives you deals on microwaves and above-ground pools.

It’s almost like, in all of our programming, we’ve lost the ability to be real with people and so we rely on faux-creativity to build “bridges.” What happened to real relationships? Like sitting around talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly over a burger and root beer?