Hugs are Awkward

Have you ever been listening to a radio show and they were talking about what was going on in the room? So their conversation, though seemingly funny, was lost on you because you didn’t have the visual perspective they had? This post may be that way. Feel free to move on if necessary. 

Last night, in the moments before I fell asleep, my wife had on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a show that I have a bipolar relationship with. It’s terribly funny but terribly cliche. Sometimes I can watch it and not stop laughing, and sometimes I’d rather watch the Food Network (I HATE the Food Network). 

This particular episode was about the dad, Frank (Peter Boyle), and his relationship with sons Raymond (Ray Romano) and Robert. A random guy shows up at the door to start the show, and this man seems to have a deep appreciation and love for Ray’s dad — who Ray and Robert have a long history of conflict and memories of dislike with. As it becomes clear that this new man has a father-figure affection for Frank, Ray and Robert get more and more uncomfortable and upset. 

In the climatic scene of the show, Ray and Robert are being forced to hug their Father by all of the women in their lives (Ray and Robert’s Wives, as well as the Mother). It’s a terribly awkward scene, which I scoured the internet for this morning. If you haven’t seen it, again I apologize for not having sufficient visual aid. In particular, Robert’s wife Amy keeps shouting phrases like “embrace your inner emotions.” 

It would be a perfect video clip to play if I was doing a presentation of forced “community” in churches. We call for authenticity, transparency, and realness. 

But I’m growing more and more cynical towards the ideal that those things translate into hugs. 

Or awkward confessions.

Or taking a paper and writing out everything everyone’s ever done wrong to you.

Or being forced to have small group conversation about your “struggles” with a handful of strangers (people you see once a week are hardly “close”). 

How can we make intimacy natural and not forced? How can we allow for people to find connectivity and authenticity in ways that are good and healthy for them?

I would say we need to seek authenticity and transparency in a way that honors the individual, not in a way that’s clinical and contrived.

Story & Measurement

“Story is the measurement of community. Story emerges from life…story is the universal measurement of life.”

-JosephMyers, Organic Community

A few years ago, when we moved to Oregon, we knew that we’d rarely get back across the country to see family. It seemed to come true, because we only went to Alabama (where both sets of parents live) once or twice a year. 

There was a peculiar thing that happened, and still happens, in regard to the church where I spent my junior high and high school years in youth group. Now, Ashley’s dad is a Recreation Pastor on staff at a church, so we will be going to church with them without question when we’re visiting her family. And that’s great, because I like their church and I don’t hardly know anyone anyways. It’s just a chance to relax and worship. 

However, it’s always been different at my “home” church. After I went to college, I started coming home less and less and grew apart from the small congregation. The youth pastor was no longer at the church and there was no real “youth group” to speak of; in fact, a large majority of the families and adults I had relationships with are no longer a part of the church. The pastor is no longer there, and the few times I have been back over the last 5-6 years I’ve felt more like a stranger than an old friend. 

When we are in Alabama, I usually just justify our choice to stay at home on Sunday mornings by mentioning that we only spend a few days a year with my parents, and I want Emery to get as much time as possible with her grandparents. This is the truth.

There’s also another reason why it’s hard for me to go to church there.

I keep having the same experiences. Everyone asks the same question, and then they give you 30 seconds of their attention (2 minutes if you’re lucky), and then they move on. Which is ok, you can’t expect everyone to give you an hour of their time.

But when you haven’t seen someone in 2-3 years and they ask you about your life, your ministry, or your family….that’s not a story I can tell in 30 seconds. I can’t run down the numbers and give you a 90 second breakdown on 3 years of ministry, family, and life. I felt like I wanted to tell a story, and some people just wanted to ask the question (as a formality) and move on (after saying  ”well, that’s nice”… of course).

That’s the thing: my life is a story, and it’s a sum of stories, but it will never be numerically quantifiable. 

Numbers will never tell you how I loved, or how I hated, or how thoughtful I was, or how much joy was in the depth of my soul. 

Numbers can’t explain the relationship I have with my wife, or how my heart melts when my baby gallops towards me for a hug. 

Numbers can’t even tell you how bad of a day I’ve had, or describe how much relief I’ve felt after a long run. 

But sit down…and let me tell you a story.

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. 

more on Community

When we use the word ‘community’ in church, which definition do we mean?

When we say we want ‘deep community,’ which definition do we mean?

When we say we want a “Sunday morning Community” or that we’re interested in a “Tuesday evening Community,” which definition do we mean?

I’ve heard so many young adults express the need for community. They say they connect better in community, grow better in community, and even learn better in community. All of which I agree with. 
The connection point is a no brainer.
Your holistic growth is definitely hinged on dependency and humility, something you can’t fully grasp solo or loosely affiliated.
Learning is the quality I find major disagreements with, but only if we’re talking about learning in the Western, modernistic sense. If we’re talking about a shared life, setting an example type learning and education–then community fits the bill.  

Will you scroll back up and glance over the 9 definitions again?

 I want to quickly make these 2 points:

-the first 4 definitions are probably not in line with the Biblical, eastern idea of community. They’re more of sociological definitions dealing with research methodology and structure. Here, the language of community is used to group people for the very purpose of defining, segmenting, and differentiating. In short, they sum up the Western cultural idea of ‘community.’

-The last 5 definitions are better. They’re much simpler, much more graspable. In some ways, they stand in stark contrast to the first 4, though they share some phraseology in places. Now, we can use these definitions. We can co-opt these definitions for Kingdom use. Listen to the phrases….

“leading a common life according to a rule…”
“community of property”
“community of interests”
“the needs of the community”
“joint possession”
“similar character”

 
 
I don’t want to be quick to point out the similarities to the church in Acts… but here we are. Let me be the first to say that I think there are far too many Christians, especially young Christians, who over-romanticize the Apostolic period and the early church. What people need to be upfront and honest about is that there were a lot of problems in the church. Everything wasn’t peachy and super spiritual, like sitting in front of a TBN broadcast all day, or being out with Ray Comfort and successful 9.5 out of 10 times using a banana to evangelize.
But what I think we can learn regarding their church(es) and community is that they brilliantly co-opted the prevailing culture’s concept of community and fused it with something bigger, more dangerous, and deeper than Rome had ever seen. Their communities were bringing the Kingdom of God to collide with the lives of everyone who saw them.
What I’m suggesting is that we must find a way, through authentic struggle, to take in the cultural norms concerning “community” and co-opt them. Not 50 years ago, or 400 years ago, or 1800 years ago. Today. in 2008.

First step? Maybe dream of ways to see the Kingdom bumping into those first 4 definitions, blurring the lines of where research ends and the transformation of God is only beginning…

the first forum and a late night

Tonight I’ve got to unwind some. Tomorrow’s an off-day as far as work goes, so I can try and sleep in a few extra minutes. Let me recap a sweet day for you:

7:00 a.m. great coffee at our apt
8:30 a.m. checking emails in my office
10:00 a.m. meeting with Laura about leadership
12:00 p.m. lunch with Ryan and Mike downtown at Sammy’s
2:00 p.m. the swimming pool with the Peeler’s, Danielle, and kids. Lots of kids.
6:30 p.m. Young Adult Forum #1 at Jay Lee’s home
9:00 p.m. Humperdinks on Greenville with some friends to watch the playoff game. Go Celtics.
11:00 p.m. Sitting on my couch drinking a grape Thomas Kemper and trying to write a theology paper.

What’s my theology paper on this week? By…. wait. Is it raining? I just took my giant skullcandy headphones off and heard a weird sound outside… hold on…

Nope. No rain. One big sprinkler going off 6 feet from our front door. Looks like a great geyser. Back to the theology paper… By choice my topic is “Sin and the Impaired Relationship with Creation.” Which is actually broad enough to write 1000 words in less than 20 minutes. Guaranteed. You can take that to the bank. Cash money. Ok, I’m annoying myself.

Tonight was good. It was very healthy and surprisingly care-free. Back in May, I threw out a lame idea about having a series of “forums” over the summer to work through vision stuff with young adults. Being a new staff member and all, I thought it would be helpful. I only brought it up half-heartedly, but Jay seemed content to push the idea until I didn’t want to talk about it for a month. Anyways, after several meetings and some planning, we decided to proceed with 3 forums over June and July for young adults.

But the topic wasn’t vision per se…. the topic was Story. I think that’s the beautiful part of it all. What did we want/do? Young adults to get together and tell their stories. They could talk about what’s happened in the past (good or bad), what’s going on in the present, or even what they see in the future. I’m all about cultivating some prophetic imagination…bring it on! And people shared. They opened up. Some talked about disappointments, that they’d built up these high expectations of radically impacting their coworkers and the community and fallen flat. Some shared ideas about how to better connect us as a ministry, and some gave thanks for opportunities. We heard about people who are living out the Kingdom among oppressed spouses and young couples who just need friends.

Why stories? Because these people, like most church people, have had vision cast to them out the wazzu. They’ve had sessions where they’ve been asked to “lead” but really they’ve just been told by staff what they’re going to do and they better get on board (this isn’t because staff are bad people… it’s just because that’s the only way we’ve known how to do it). They don’t need another program and they don’t need to be forced into “community.”
The truth is, they’re already living out the mission. They’re already being the hands and feet of Jesus, and if they aren’t “doing anything,” they’re at least longing for it — and that counts for a lot.
What we needed to come together and realize is that we have a collective story. Young adults at Highland Park Pres have a rich, deep, vibrant story of community, missions, and love. There’s nothing currently uniting YA. We had 15 people present there and everyone had at least one person there that they had never met. And there were no “new” people there. We just gave them an opportunity to connect.

It was a great first step. Realizing that we have a collective story is the first step towards bringing about a collective imagination/collective initiative among the people. Stories represent power, changed lives, and experienced liberation.

How do you get individuals in a community to come together and get them on mission? Let them tell their stories.