Talking honestly about a full range of issues

The church is the people of God. As such, within the church there should be open and honest dialogue about tough issues. And the dialogue, though it might still be hard, should still be safe because there's an underlying sense that we are family, forgiven in God's sight, and though still fallible, we're still working toward a common goal of glorifying God -- in part by being able to have really hard discussions and still loving each other through it.

That's the ideal, at least. Instead the discussions within the church are often either surface-level or hit only upon the hard issues with the understood undertone that everyone should agree about the issue and we know it's the heathen who are against us on this. (Any suspicion that someone within our own membership stands with the heathen on a particular issue is so unsettling that the conversation is often quickly changed.) 

On the one hand, it's very hard to have tough conversations together. Very few people look forward to something like that. But on the other hand, having a tough discussion and having it turn out well, where you learn something that you didn't know, or come away with more understanding for a fellow member of the church, is a wonderful thing. If we knew that every hard discussion would come out with such a positive ending, perhaps we'd jump into them much more readily.

John Alexander said that he believes that eating together is a sign of a healthy church. (By the way, I should add that within the church that John was a part of, the entire congregation eats together every Sunday evening. They also eat together in smaller groups several times during the week.) Along the same lines of eating together was being together in general. Not only do many congregations not do much together throughout the week, but within some congregations there is so much turn-over that it's very hard to form a cohesive sense of community within the group. 

Rob and I were members of a church in San Francisco that had about 400 members. Some friends of ours moved away to Kansas but came back for a short visit a few months after they had moved. We saw them after the service and they spoke briefly to us but then excused themselves to go say hi to several other friends. They returned awhile later saying that they were unable to find anyone else they knew! They had only been gone a few months and already the turnover was so great that though they had been in the church for at least a year before leaving, they were unable to find people they had known from when they lived in the area. That astounded me. (I knew there was a high turnover rate, and that I was having a very hard time feeling connected to anyone, but this brought it all home with a very specific example of the problem.) 

John Alexander points out that in a church with such a high turn-over rate, especially if we only see each other once a week on Sunday mornings, it is very unlikely that folks will get to the meaty issues of life. We may hear the pastor preach on something that's a tough issue, but then do we get a chance to talk to others in the body about our own thoughts on that issue or how we're dealing with that problem in our own lives? John asks, Do we, as a church, "talk honestly about a full range of tough issues?" That line particularly got me to thinking. I know that high turn-over rates are a problem. That's one thing that I like about our church is that there are people who have been in the congregation for twenty years, and even many of the "newcomers" have been around for upwards of 3 or 4 years or longer. (We've been members of the church for almost 9 years.) But has that familiarity led to a better ability to work through hard issues together? 

Sometimes I feel like in Sunday School or the gals Bible study we'll hit on a tough issue. And sometimes we really do have good, solid discussions on them. But there are other issues that we seem to skirt around as a congregation. So, while our congregation has the non-transient thing down pretty well, I think we still struggle with the "full range of tough issues" area. Our pastor has brought up some forums in which we might be able to tackle some of the harder discussions, but I can't say that there's been a stampede to dive in. 

And it's certainly not just our congregation. I'm sure this is a problem throughout the world. Which is a shame. God's people, of all folks, should be able to address each other in love and compassion and a thoughtfulness that enables really heavy and deep and hard conversations to take place in such a way that healing and growth and unity can occur. 

Philippians 2:1-4 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

My interests may not be the same as someone else's. In fact, it's quite possible that my interests conflict with someone else's. But if we are to be a body, to work together as individual bits formed and shaped into one entity, the body of Christ, then shouldn't we take time out to consider the interests of others? To discuss those interests with them and gain a better understanding of where each other is coming from? ... well, of course. And I'm sure we all would even agree on that, though the thought of sitting down and actually doing as much can be a bit daunting. 

Which really gets to the heart of the question, I suppose. What can we do to get more of this "talking honestly about a full range of issues" happening? How can we foster this sort of thing both in the local church as well as the church national or the church global? Have you seen hard discussions talked out in a loving way among believers? What helped to foster that? 

Emailing Together

I wrote two days ago about John Alexander's idea that a healthy family, and possibly also a healthy church, eats together. I suspect they also do other things together. In the book, The Blessing, one of their suggestions near the end of the book is that families that go camping together seem to be closer than those that don't. I think the essential idea here is that healthy communities spend time together. It could involve eating, or camping, or serving the poor together, or singing together, or ____ together.

But what struck me today as I wrote out a lengthy email to one of the congregation's recent college graduates who's currently overseas and who hasn't been physically present with the congregation in the four years she's been to school (excepting holiday times), is that in today's day and age, a congregation can talk together, or share photos together, or what have you, via the internet. Granted, that's still pretty different than sitting down at a table next to someone and showing them the photos of a recent trip. But it enables a congregation to continue "togethering" even when a part of that congregation is thousands of miles away. That's kinda cool.

If, as John has suggested, the health of a congregation can in part be determined by how frequently the members eat together, then perhaps another touchstone of health could be in how frequently members keep in contact with each other online, even when they might be in another state or country.

What do you think? How often do you interact with the members of your congregation online?

Eating Together

In John Alexander's book, Stop Going to Church and Become the Church (I'm not sure if that's still the title of the book, but that's what it was a dozen years ago when I first got a manuscript copy.), John lists some touch points for determining if the church you're a part of is one with a predominantly entertainment model (the congregation attends Sunday morning services and mostly just sits and watches while paid staff perform for the bulk of the event) or closer to a body model (in which members are actively involved regularly (and not just on Sundays) in each other's lives). One such touch stone that he lists is the amount that the church eats together. He says:

"How much do folks eat together in your church? I suspect that frequency of eating together is one of the best indicators of the health of a biological family. And I wonder if that's not equally true of church families."

Our church has monthly potlucks in which we all stay after the Sunday morning service and eat together. We often have at least one BBQ a month in the summer. And the pastor's family often invites people over to their house for a meal. I suspect that if we tried to get together any more than that, it wouldn't work. People in our little congregation tend to be too busy for much more than that. (We do have meetings that don't involve food. So it's not like we only see each other on Sundays. I'm just saying that adding in yet another gathering time probably isn't realistic at this point.)

John spends a fair bit of time in his book talking about where people spend their time -- how much of it is spent being a church vs. other activities. I think time spent together is a problem that our church is struggling with these days. When we first joined the congregation almost 9 years ago, it seemed that people traveled less and gathered together more. I don't think anyone in the congregation would be opposed to the idea of getting together more often. But practically speaking, I'm not sure how it could come about right now without it being forced.

I think that taking a specific, eating together, and using that as a measuring stick of sorts regarding the health of a church is an interesting idea. What do you think? How often does your church eat together (either in small groups or as an entire body)? Do you feel that the time spent together helps to grow and build the church?

It strikes me that some churches measure how well they're doing based on how many people attend the Sunday morning services. I wonder how well those same churches would fare if the criteria was how often they eat together rather than how many people are sitting in the pews?

Unity

"Most of us are in unity with no one but ourselves." -- John Alexander

How being a church is like playing baseball

More quotes from John Alexander's book:

"Church is a full-time occupation, not the weekly attendance of a performance. Church isn't the sort of thing you can go to. You can be the church, you can become the church, you can even do church, but you can't go to church. ... One way of saying it is that church is the sort of thing that you become part of. You're the church whenever you're with other Christians in such a way that you depend on each other, love each other, serve each other, and speak the truth to each other in love for the sake of Jesus." 

"Our task is to find ways to become the church together. I suggest that becoming the church is rather like becoming a baseball team. Players have to practice together enough to learn each others strengths and weaknesses. Then they can use each others strengths and play around each others weaknesses.  They sort out who can pitch, who can field, who can bat, who can coach. In the process, they learn to rely on each other, team sprit 'arises,' and somewhere along the way, rather mysteriously, they cease being just a collection of individuals and a group identity appears. They become a team. They become the Cubs." (lol! Sounds like John is channeling Bob Appleby here, except that I suspect he was already doing the sports metaphors before he met Bob. Those two were like two peas in a pod.)

He then goes on to explain that he's not talking about just making Sunday morning services more participatory. He says, " Services are important, but church is mostly crying with your brother in Christ when he learns that his son is disabled. Or helping your sister paint her house while talking together about the way, the truth, and the life."

John makes three points about what he calls "reinventing church":

1) Church is something you do or become or be, not something you go to.

2) It's crucial to identify people's strengths and weaknesses within the body and then each person should play their position -- do what they're good at. 

3) "God intends us to be part of team, part of a body." 

4) "In neither baseball nor church is a building crucial.

To sum up, "In both [baseball and being a church], it's more of a process than an event. In both, it's a matter of spirit. In both, the way it happens is rather mysterious. In both, coaching is crucial. In both, not recognizing your need for others is disastrous. In both, there's a place for observing, but it's for people not on the team, for nonChristians, for outsiders."

Convenience

"What is truly convenient? And who is it convenient for? And let’s remember that for all our conveniences there is someone or some place on the other end that may not find it convenient at all." -- Tracy Bianchi, from an article entitled Convenience and its Consequences