Here’s a fourth piece I’ve written for the Christian Standard this year–this one on the importance of friendship. (Actually they let me adapt a piece I’d written not long ago as an editorial in Wineskins.)
I’ve been trying to practice what I preach the past couple days. I’ve been with three buddies up in Vermont hanging out. It’s a trip I’ve made every year for a long time to be with these guys. One’s from Arkansas, one’s from Vermont, and one divides his time between Vermont and Boston (where he is a prof).
This year there wasn’t much hiking because it’s been raining in the NE for 40 days and 40 nights, or something like that. But with the Angels and the Cardinals in the playoffs and with plenty of good food, we did just fine.
I am blessed by God to have friends that point me to Christ and encourage me everyday, I hope that I am that to them also.
Excellent article, Mike, thank you. There are a group of men in the GST that are that community to one another, I’m privileged to be a part.
I wonder, though, if the examples you gave of the term community being worked over (”AOL community, gay community, green community, etc.”) are really that far away from the real thing. I would bet that the term is used–not because of the absence of the real thing–but because of the existence of aspects of the real thing in these places. The term is worked because people are incapable of living without a community of some sort. I’m curious how these other communities meet communal needs the church misses or if they exist alongside the church.
Phew, that was too long for a comment. Sorry. You just provided a lot of food for thought.
I’m sorry to use Mike’s blog for this purpose but I need to get information out to you regarding my 5 year old son Tyler. I left a message on Mike’s Oct. 11th posting about my son who was diagnosed with a brian tumor on Monday, Oct. 10th.
We now have a CarePage set up for Tyler. You can see pictures of Tyler and his family, read postings from us as we go through the beginning stages of this process this upcoming week, and provide comments to Tyler to offer encouragement. The instructions on how to do this is below. The registration is free and one-time only. Please help my wife Laura and I hold Tyler up to God during this time. Thank you for the support we’ve received so far. Words can’t express how much it is appreciated.
To visit the CarePage, please click the link below:
http://www.carepages.com/ServeCarePage?cpn=tyler99
(If you cannot click through this link, please copy and paste the
entire URL into your browser’s address window.)
…or you can use these manual instructions:
1. Go to http://www.carepages.com
2. Click “Visit a CarePage”
3. Register (first-time users only)
4. After you’ve registered, enter the exact CarePage Name below:
tyler99
Please forward this e-mail to anyone who would be a meaningful part
of Tyler’s support group.
Thanks,
Mark Stewart
Bloomington, IL
Mike,
I’ve seen a few people link to John Dobb’s blog at http://remains.blogspot.com (he’s the minister for the church in Pascagoula, MS on the Mississippi Gulf Coast) from here. I challenge all your readers to take a look at his blog (again, that’s http://remains.blogspot.com) and make note of the very, very serious needs that they the people in that town are dealing with. This area is not receiving the media coverage of places like Gulfport and New Orleans, yet Pascagoula is dealing with the same level of devesation. I’ve recently spent half a week down there and there is not one house that is inhabitable. Please pray for the people, consider going down and ministering, and/or send assistance.
Some of my favorite stuff is from Vermont: the band Phish and Ben and Jerry’s.
Angels are out, Cards will be shortly behind them. Stros to Series, baby!
Mark,
I love the Care Page you have started for Tyler.
Mike,
In your article, the point you made about Christians and healers reminded me of a recent event I had with a dear friend of mine and fellow counselor who, in a very short period of time, dealt with her husband having 2 strokes, an affair with his high school sweetheart, him purchasing several large ticket items and filing for divorce.
I helped nurture her as she has me, but as a Christian, not as a counselor. I got other people of faith involved who don’t have any degrees in the healing arts, but who, by virtue of their walk with God, have a personal relationship with the Great Physician.
The divorce was dropped, the couple is back together and attending church regularly and are now closely involved with a community of faith. It has been an awesome process to witness.
Wow. What a terrific article. It makes me intensely curious to see articles one, two and three. Would that be possible? I know your post wasn’t specifically dealing with the Christian church, but as the Christian Standard is connected with them I wanted to share some encouraging news with you.
We are meeting with the elders of Sarasota Christian Church this week to strenghthen and celebrate their support for our inner city work…Suncoast Urban Ministy. They have been supporters for the past 2 years. We have also hosted some joint devotionals with them and several other Christian Churches in this area. Unfortunately that has caused serious tension between us and our sister church of Christ congregations. But we are really encouraged by the unity efforts now happening across the country. Two other Christian Churches are now supporting the ministry, and two more are considering it.
This thanksgiving we will having an area wide joint devotional to celebrate our unity. I feel like I discovered family that I never knew I had!
Mike,
Thanks for the link to the article. I am the reciepient of unconditional love from a handful of friends who would “hide me” and its a trememdous encouragement. I believe that your synopsis is truley what God intended church life to be. Thanks for your daily sharing.
Keith
I’m including the article here in case that link is lost eventually. (Added 9/14/06):
My wife will tell you I’m “relationally challenged” when it comes to expressing my feelings. But a while back, I decided to tell a friend of mine what I was feeling. He and I have been through so much together over the past decade. We’ve prayed together, laughed together, hiked together, shared good books together. He’s more into Shakespeare; I’m more into Grisham. He likes to watch movies with subtitles; I like movies with Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford. But, remarkably, we’ve tended to find much common ground and to teach each other to appreciate something different.
But not long ago my buddy moved. I encouraged him to. It seemed clear to me that God was calling him to a new job.
This particular night, however, I was feeling his absence. So I summoned up all my “I-can-too-describe-my-feelings” courage and dropped him a four-sentence e-mail. I just told him that I missed him and that I felt unprotected without him. Then I thanked him for the thousands of times he’d guarded my heart and soul.
That night, he responded. He said, “I thought of how you had introduced me to Larry Crabb and his idea of the church being a place of true safety, ‘the safest place on earth.’” Then he reminded me of a story we’d discussed before: of the Nazi survivor who had a test for friendship he learned during World War II.
He and his family knew they would need protection when the Nazis came, so they would speculate about their Gentile friends. They wondered, Which ones would protect us? Who would hide us? Years later this man used this question as his litmus test of a true friend: Who would hide me?
Then my friend wrote, “Of course, you and I have settled this once and for all, haven’t we? We have seen each other at our greatest points of peril and vulnerability. I know you would hide me, and that is a comfort beyond words.”
Community Means Connecting
What I’m describing here is a taste of community—a word that gets worked pretty hard today (AOL community, gay community, green community, yoga community, Muslim community), probably because of the absence of the real thing.
True biblical community grows out of our convictions that God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—lives in perpetual communion and that he created us to be in communion with him and with one another. It means we connect at the deep levels of life with one another—praying for one another, confessing to one another, encouraging one another, guiding one another, protecting one another.
For this to happen, we have to believe something about the church that many no longer believe. Larry Crabb, a well-known Christian psychologist, has helped lead a revolution by writing about the healing power of God’s people.
To imagine the seismic shift he has in mind, picture an automobile accident in your city. Emergency vehicles whiz to the scene and rush the victims to the Emergency Room, where the real healers, the physicans, can take over.
Unfortunately, in this therapeutic culture we have come to believe that the real healers are counselors and ministers. About all ordinary Christians can do when people they know have wrecked lives is try to rush people to the experts.
In his books Connecting and The Safest Place on Earth, Crabb urged Christians to move away from this unbiblical way of thinking. It would be better to see ministers and counselors as the trained emergency workers who seek to get people to the real healers–their friends, their small group, their elders, mature Christians—who will enter through the power of the Holy Spirit into their lives.
We must get past thinking, “Whew! Thank goodness we finally got them to a therapist. Now they have a chance.” Crabb—a therapist himself—doesn’t discount the value of a Christ-filled counselor. But his greater focus is on the church. It’s there that we find deepest truths: that we are made in God’s image, that sin is our deepest problem, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. It’s there that we find cross-shaped stories of courage, covenant-keeping, strength-in-weakness, forgiveness, and nonviolence.
Again and again Crabb points the church to the transforming potential of spiritual friendships. Because we’ve been created in God’s image, redeemed by Christ, and filled with the Spirit, we are able to enter into one another’s lives in ways that are healing and sustaining. We are able to remind one another of God’s unconditional love; we can gently and humbly point out sinful thoughts and behaviors; we can offer the counsel of Scripture and the forgiving word of grace. He makes the radical claim that the person best qualified to talk wisely and meaningfully about our deepest battles and our painful memories and our secret sins is the person filled with Christ. “Qualifications to effectively counsel have more to do with wisdom and character than with training and degrees.”
It is in the safety of friends who will hide us and who will be honest with us that we can survive. Crabb asks us to imagine two men. One is enjoying a good relationship, including a satisfying sex life, with his wife, but has no close male friends. The other has a tough marriage and a lousy sex life. But this second man is deeply connected with other men who serve as mentors, fathers, brothers, and friends in his life.
In a time of sexual temptation for both men, Crabb says he’d bet on the second man to be faithful. “You can manage some difficulties in your marriage and sexual relationship with your wife as long as the deep longings of the soul are being touched in relationships, centrally with Christ.”
Community Is Possible
My mind races back to our own spiritual friendships, including our little covenant group. When Diane and I could hardly breathe after our daughter, Megan, died, this group intubated us and breathed for us. They listened, they wept, they held, they prayed, and they spoke words of grief and hope. When our sorrow at times alienated the two of us from one another, they bound us back together. The healing balm was Christ.
The big question, of course, is, “Where do I get friends like that?” They don’t sell them at Starbucks. They don’t seem to be available on eBay.
Undoubtedly, the place to begin is in solitude and prayer. We are ready to engage in deep community with others only after we have found our deepest rest in God alone. Otherwise, we’ll try to get people to fill places that only God can fill. Ask God to send you a friend or two with whom you can be spiritually connected. (And while you’re at it, get rid of some of your preconceived ideas of what that person might look like!)
Second, take some relationship risks. You can’t hibernate waiting for spiritual connectedness to break out around you. Take a chance by entrusting someone with something that isn’t huge. Did the person seem wise? Were they confidential? Did they point you to Christ?
Third, show some restraint. Haven’t we all been scared off by someone who took the phrase “whither thou goest I will go” just a bit too literally? We wanted to run! So will others. Ease into these relationships, letting God’s Spirit use time and experience to bind you together.
And fourth, consider starting a covenant group of people who are anxious to experience community on their Christian pilgrimage. You might begin by reading together one of Crabb’s books or perhaps Randy Frazee’s The Connecting Church—maybe even Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s timeless Life Together. Read them, along with the rich biblical passages about community, and ask, What can our relationship to one another mean? How can we enter deeply into one another’s lives with the gospel? How can we be present for one another without becoming insular and self-serving?
Never before has a civilization been so digitally connected or so personally disconnected. Cell phones, answering machines, beepers, faxes, e-mail, and BlackBerrys–yes, we can hardly get away from one another. So electronically connected, yet so lonely.
I think Crabb is right:
The future of the church depends on whether it develops true community. We can get by for a while on size, skilled communication, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense that we belong to each other, with masks off, the vibrant church of today will become the powerless church of tomorrow.
Mike Cope is preaching minister with the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas, and adjunct professor at Abilene Christian University.
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