A post from my Monday morning column at Zondervan’s ministry blog, Engaging Church. In it I share an important burden I have for my ministry: our process and context for connecting people in our church together. But first: How does your church connect? What problems do you sense exist in the way people in your ministry are connecting? Like me, have you had this nagging sense there’s more work to do to help your church truly be a connecting church? (You can read the whole thing HERE)
I pastor a small church that’s in the process of revitalizing. In the past few months we’ve seen a growth spurt—like a full doubling of our community! We have new families, new unmarried people, new widowed people, new young and older people. For a small church on the brink of closing this is a very good season of our next chapter.
But lately I’ve become really concerned and really interested in making sure our church “connects.” In fact it’s one of our so-called “verbs” (or active values): we value connecting in community. We want to cultivate safe space for people to do life together as a genuine community of people that reflects the familiarity and intimacy and messiness and support of a life-long family bent on unconditionally loving its own in unity.
Yet , surprisingly, connecting in community seems to be as hard in a church of 50 as in a church of 500 or 5000. You’d think a smaller church would provide the type of DNA to foster intimate connections—and it does to a larger degree than larger communities. But what I’ve begun to realize is that the tight-knit family bond that exists in a smaller church can make it hard for new people to break in. New people who long to connect and form Christ-centered relationships and journey toward wholeness with a tribe of people can be left on the side-lines looking in.
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It’s because of these questions and this nagging sense of our need to do “more” that I am super excited for Randy Frazee’s new book The Connecting Church 2.0. As the title suggests, it’s an upgraded version of the book he wrote 12 years ago to jumpstart authentic community in American churches. This upgrade couldn’t come at a better time in the life of the American church, not to mention my own church.
You’d think with all of the “advancements” in social-networking technology we’d be even more connected and feel less lonely. Yet despite the increasing popularity of social-networking sites most adults have only two close friends in which they feel comfortable discussing important matters, like family and work problems, fears, and issues of meaning and purpose. Despite our inter-connectedness, we’re now more alone than ever.
Randy notes that “While technology has created all kinds of…new opportunities to stay connected to people around the world, its change rate has also accelerated our loneliness.” He continues:
More and more folks, young and old, rely almost exclusively on the technology of email, texting, Twitter, and Facebook for their relationships. [Yet] you don’t have to take a class in sociology to know this won’t cut it. You don’t have to go to seminary to know this is no substitute for the way God designed us to live. We were wired to require real eye-to-eye contact. We were created for real hugs…Virtual condolences will never match the power of simply ‘being there’ when a friend is bruised in a relationship or broken by an unexpected announcement. (14)
And this is where Randy’s book comes in. The purpose of The Connecting Church 2.0 is “to help people who feel [lonely and unconnected] find what they are searching for, to help people discover a rich sense of community. To belong!” (24) And he helps churches create such a place by exploring three obstacles that hinder finding biblical community in America; three solutions to these barriers; and fifteen characteristics that our churches must cultivate in order to help people experience true Christian community.
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So recently I’ve become deeply burdened for how we connect as a church. While we have deliberately created opportunities to connect before and after our worship gathering, and at other times throughout the week, I have this nagging sense there is more work to do to help new (and even existing) people connect in community.
This is my ministry experience right now, but how about yours? Like me, have you had this nagging sense there’s more work to do to help your church truly be a connecting church?
And most importantly: What’s that “one thing” you can do this week—as a youth minister, small group leader, or pastor—to help foster the type of environment of a connecting church? Consider sharing it here to help spark our imaginations for our own “one thing.”
