DANGER SIGNS ON CHURCH FRIENDSHIPS: Shallow conversation, safe prayer requests, and busy pastors.
- Sometimes church members can be mean to each other, but even in good times many church friendships are characterized by their lack of depth. What are some of the signs?
a. Shallow conversation.
- In most church conversations, the talk is characterized by shallow politeness. There is no depth or seriousness to the discussion. We keep it shallow.
b. Safe prayer requests.
- When we share prayer requests in church, they tend toward the safe. People who are sick make up the overwhelming majority of the requests. I know that we can’t necessarily share all of our personal stuff in a larger meeting, but the almost complete lack of anything personal in almost all church meeting contexts says a lot. It says that we don’t think that church is a safe place to share our burdens.
c. Busy pastors.
- Most churches hire a pastor to “run the church.” He is to plan the worship, attend the meetings, preach the sermons, and generally keep the organization running efficiently. The thing that leaves almost no time for is developing deep relationships with his congregation. Sure, he is expected to visit the sick, but he generally doesn’t have time to keep up with what’s going on in people’s lives or to disciple several people in their spiritual growth. This approach has become so typical of American churches that congregations don’t expect anything different. They are surprised when a pastor takes a personal interest in them. They just figured he was too busy.
A BETTER WAY: Hearts wide open.
- 2 Corinthians 6:11-13.
- Twice in this passage Paul speaks of opening your heart wide. In v. 11 he reminds the Corinthians that he and his fellow ministers opened their hearts wide to them. In v. 13 he encourages them to do the same in return.
- “Hearts wide open” is not a concept that needs much explanation. They didn’t just share a message with them – they shared their lives and their heart.
- Of course, both of the books written to the Corinthian churches paint a picture of dysfunction, so it is not a surprise that they were not properly sharing their affection with Paul (v. 12). They were a mess of split loyalties, moral lapses, and theological ignorance. Paul here is pointing them toward the type of relationships that they should have.
- Going back to the three danger signs that we began with, we have to admit that the American church is not exactly killing it on this issue.
- Many church growth strategies focus on providing a terrific performance to those coming on Sunday morning or on aggressive evangelism techniques that feel like insurance sales.
- Rarely do we think about the quality of the relationships within the church.
- Indeed, we glorify huge churches where there are too many people to know everyone. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with huge churches – they can use small groups to connect people to each other. Still, the thing that is envied about them by other churches is not that the church has deep and meaningful relationships, but how huge the Sunday morning attendance is.
- This is a strange oversight when you think about it. There are many people who happily remain in smaller churches through frequent pastoral changes because they have deep, healthy relationships within their church family. This is not a minor thing to them. In fact, it is probably the single most important factor that kept them there even through times of struggle.
- This “hearts wide open” approach is not one that is evident in a lot of churches today, so let’s paint a little picture of what it might look like.
- It’s worth considering for a moment that the Bible speaks of the church as a family. My male friends in church are my “brothers”; my female my “sisters.” It speaks of “God’s family” and the “family of believers.” There should be a closeness there. There should be an intimacy. We should be more than just people who sit in adjacent pews.
WHAT MIGHT THAT LOOK LIKE?
- There are many more ideas we could discuss, but I’m just going to share a few to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
1. Small groups with honest sharing.
- Think for a second about the typical conversations that happen in church. They are polite . . . and shallow. There is nothing mean about them but neither is there anything meaningful about them.
- That’s not the way it should be. Church should be a place where you can share your real life.
- Think for a second about the fact that, for many, church is the last place they’d want to confess something. People would talk behind their back rather than praying for them.
- That’s not the way it should be. Church should be a place where you can share your struggles.
- It’s interesting that v. 11 uses the phrase “spoken freely.” That is something we need more of. Of course, it usually only happens in close relationships where trust has been built.
2. Meals in each other’s homes.
- It’s striking how often in the Bible people meet at a table. There is the Last Supper. There is the wedding feast of the Lamb. There are all the parables of Jesus about meals. There is Paul’s instruction about communion. And that doesn’t even include the wealth of Old Testament meals.
- There is something significant, both theologically and socially, about sitting down with someone at a table for a meal.
- For the person hosting the meal, there is the act of inviting someone into your home. It’s different from just meeting someone at a restaurant.
- For the guest, there is the act of being invited into a home. There is a level of welcome that is different from just meeting at a restaurant.
- Further, there is the fellowship of sitting around a table sharing a meal.
- One way that you can see the power in this seemingly innocuous act is within the family. Even within families, often people don’t sit down to eat together anymore. And yet studies have found that the simple act of eating dinner together as a family has enormous impact in lives of those in family, especially the children.
- Why is that? I’m not 100% sure, though I have my guesses. What is clear is that whatever the reason, there is power in the act of inviting someone into your home to share a meal.
- This happens incredibly rarely today. In addition to just not being as social as we used to be, we even less frequently have people into our homes. Maybe it’s our busyness. Maybe it’s that we don’t feel like we have friends we would want to invite over. Maybe it’s that no one else is doing it.
- That represents a big missed opportunity.
- One area in particular that mystifies me on this issue concerns our seniors. I’ve heard many complain that they never get to cook anymore, even though they enjoy it, because you can’t really cook for one. Knowing there are other seniors in similar situations, it would seem a wide-open door for people to rotate gathering at each other’s homes, both to enjoy the conversation and fellowship as well as the food, but it just doesn’t happen.
3. Sharing financial burdens.
- In the early church we see them freely sharing their possessions to care for one another’s needs. They knew each other well and cared for each other well.
- Everyone today is mostly on their own.
- Part of that arises from the lack of close relationships within the church. We don’t help because no one knows that a person is having a hard time this month. People are unaware of the struggles that those around them in the church are going through.
- Part of that arises from the American focus on each person making their own way. We are each our own “economic unit” and are to take care of ourselves. Sure, there are food pantries for those really in need, but it’s just expected that people will handle their own situations, despite the fact that everyone has bad times.
- Whatever the reason, it’s a rarity to see Christians regularly helping each other these days.
- By this, I’m not even thinking of making an announcement in church that there is an anonymous need in the church that we want to assist with (although that would be a good thing to do). I’m more thinking about people knowing what’s going on in people’s lives and offering help as a matter of course.
- Perhaps someone in your small group has had major surgery and had to be off work for two months. During prayer time, they talk about running out of sick days but still not feeling well enough to go back to work. Someone in the group gently pushes a little on the issue. “How are you all doing financially with that going on?” Because there are honest and open relationships, the person feels comfortable sharing that it’s been difficult. Later that week, one couple in the group mails them a check for $1,000 and a note that tells them that they’re praying for them. Another couple offers to cook some meals for them once a week, since the wife is working overtime to try to make up for the husband’s lost income. Neither of these completely fixes their financial issue, but it provides some support and, perhaps more importantly, makes them feel like they’re not alone in this valley.
SECRET WEAPON: This would be incredibly attractive in a lonely society.
- There is an unusually powerful opportunity here given one of the biggest shortcomings of modern society. It is pervaded by loneliness.
- There are numerous causes of this. The rise of social media as an inferior substitute friend network. The demise of community organizations. The choices people make to not engage with those around them.
- Whatever the causes, the point for us this evening is the simple, indisputable fact: people today are lonely.
- They don’t want to be that way, though. They want meaningful connections in their life. They don’t necessarily know how to get them, but they want them.
- Rick Warren shares that few want to join an organization but everyone wants to be part of a family. Too often, though, church is merely another organization to attend rather than having that personal connection.
- Given all this, there might be many people who would end up walking with Christ just because they were well loved by a group of people.
- This could, if you want to put it this way, be a secret weapon for the church in the years to come. The church has an opportunity to be a place of meaningful connection.
- We have a lot of work to do if we want our churches to seize this opportunity because these meaningful connections are missing from most churches.
- I’ll close with a strange point that came up in my discipleship group a while back.
- We were talking about issues of discipleship, mentoring, and spiritual growth. Within the conversation, we noted that the model of one-on-one or one-on-two mentoring rarely takes place anymore. The model of church that we’ve been given is a “sit-and-soak” one – you show up, sit in the pews, soak in the message, and then go on your way. That’s all that’s required of you. That model, though pervasive, has not produced good results. We then talked about what it would look like to do better at this throughout the church. One person brought up an amazing and discouraging point: “It’s almost like we’ve forgotten how to do friendships.”
- There is an edge of truth to that point. We are not good at being friends anymore. We don’t meet for lunch. We don’t have people in our homes for meals. We don’t talk daily on the phone. Many have not one to call in their crisis moments. We don’t talk on the phone anymore. We don’t do things together. Perhaps part of this is regaining friendships in a way that honors God and furthers the Kingdom.
