"Small groups" thoughts...
Last night as I was flipping through channels I came across the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, who had Connie Schultz on at the time. She is a Pulitzer Prize winner from Cleveland, writes for the Plain Dealer paper there, and married to congressman Sherrod Brown. Now, I know nothing about her other than seeing her last night, but she was commenting on blogging on what it does for people. Craig asked her why she thought people blogged (or maybe why she did). I don't remember her exact statement, but she said something like people have so much to say, want to ask so many questions, and really have no one to talk to, or don't have a voice.
Interesting.
I visited my best friend from high school over the holidays, and he was put in charge of starting a "small group" movement in his church, but he is having problems getting it off of the ground. He was sharing his dreams for how he hopes small groups would function. He mentioned that he wants it to be the type of community where they are totally honest and raw with each other, with really the group acting as spiritual director to each other. We shared that the closest my wife and I felt to that was with them. We could tell them anything, and not receive any judgment, but genuine love and concern, totally interested in each other's lives, trying to bring the Kingdom to earth.
Coupled with these two thoughts ran another. I was watching "Blow Out" on Bravo with Jonathan (I can't remember his last name, he's a famous hairstylist for the stars), and he was talking about his regular dates with his therapists. He was mentioning how critical this is to his business, that if he didn't have someone to "dump" to, he would go crazy. Many people in Hollywood have therapists (I know, some would comment that it makes sense, but hear me out here...)...in addition to tens of thousands of others...
I think about all of the teens who just need space to vent. I think about all of the adults who need space to vent. How many people in blog land (including myself) have just vented their soul for anyone who would visit to see? How therapeutic is it for people to gather together (for me esp. youth pastors) to just share their struggles and triumphs and honest questions and afterward discover this sense of community they have never had before.
Do you notice a pattern here?
However misguided some people may be, there is a huge hunger here.
Jewish thoughts regarding the Scriptures take seriously the first time a word appears. In this story, "naked," is a great example. The word naked first appears in the Scriptures in Genesis 2:25, where it says "...Adam and his wife were both naked, neither of them felt any shame." Naked here is much more than physical, it is emotions, spirit, everything totally vulnerable, totally exposed, brutally honest. There is no hiding involved at all, no judgment, and genuine, deep connection of community.
This is how we were wired to live.
Notice the next time the word "naked" appears, in Genesis 3:7, when it says, "...their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together around their hips to cover themselves." Hiding, judgment, shame. This is not how it was supposed to be.
So this hunger to be totally honest, to have a voice, to question openly and honestly, is rooted in the fabric of how we were supposed to live. It is crying out on the radar loud and clear to the church, what will our response be?
It scares me to think that many relationships in our churches don't go there. Where we have such a sense of being totally honest with a group of people.
Why don't most want to go there?
They'll really see we're not all what we cracked up to be. They'll see us for who we really are, and not want to be around us. They'll treat us as less than human, second-class citizens. They'll tell us we're not fit for leadership. They'll tell us we're not good enough to do this and that.
Can you see how this is totally rooted in Genesis 2 and 3?
I can imagine Eve looking at Adam and asking herself, "Am I pretty enough? Does he still love me?" Or both of them hiding from God thinking, "God's not going to love me anymore." So we hide.
Think about what confession does to us. When we vent and dump, it's like we just take the weight of the world off our shoulders. I mean do you step back and look at that moment and ask why? We were not wired to live like that. We were not wired to hide from each other.
So why to we ignore it in our churches? Why do we keep hiding? What is it going to take to be the type of community that is "naked" with each other.
I want it so badly, and I'm scared of it. Scared in an excited way. Time stands still when my best friend and I get together. We just share our lives and then look at our watches and realize 7 hours just went by and it seemed like 5 minutes. Is this a glimpse of eternity? I mean think about that...Time flies when you're having these conversations. And you long for so many more of them. That's what I want, badly.
And so do many other people. I pray that we would be those types of people who want to go that far, it is rooted in who we are as humans.
A long post, but I needed to vent. :)
Grace,
Mike
