RELATIONAL

A couple of weeks ago I received my PhD. My family threw me a little party. It wasn’t a surprise, but I wasn’t in on any of the planning or inviting of guests. The party was great. My wife, Shannon, was in charge of identifying my friends while my parents invited a number of other people that have played some role in my life such as an elementary math teacher and my former youth minister. It was really pretty cool. Unfortunately most of my friends were not able to make it. I was a little disappointed in that part. I understood. Being the end of summer it was a hard weekend and a number of my close friends living out of town, but it still would have been nice to have a few more of my buddies there. So I started to think about if I could have the perfect assembly of my friends for the perfect party who I would invite. I feel that I am pretty fortunate to have a lot of friends who at one stage or another I have been pretty close to, but who would I invite to this party? I realized that if there were rings of friendship that I would have about 5 to 10 friends in the inner ring, quite a few more on the third ring, and still even more on the fourth ring, but I couldn’t think of anyone for that second ring of friends. I have a few really close friends, a lot of people that I either have grown up with or I enjoy being around, and a whole lot of people that I like, but no “just good friends.” This is hardly something to complain about and is really understandable considering I have two small children, have been finishing up graduate school, and don’t have any money go do things on. But my perfect party would be limited to those 5 to 10 inner circle of friends. Everyone else that I know, regardless of how much I like them, have in common with them, have history with them, or enjoy being with them are more like “friends” than anything else.

The problem is that I am really introverted. My Myers-Briggs score is off the charts introverted. This means that my personality just doesn’t allow me become good friends with people easily. People like me for the most part, but I will never be mistaken as the life of anyone’s party. Some people have the ability to walk in the room and be best buddies with everyone. Not me. I walk into a room and find the closest wall that I can support. So for me, it isn’t that I don’t have anyone in my second ring of friends, it’s just that the distance between my first ring and second ring is really big and the third and firth ring are promoted. I suspect that even those people who everyone loves and could and would hold a party with 250 of their closest friends actually is in the same situation as I am though. They may enjoy and connect with people more, but their inner circle is pretty small.

So when the replicated church calls itself “relational” what it intend to mean is that the foundation of their ministry is built on relationships more than religion. Forget for a second that many churches throughout history have also been built on the same foundations even if there was a greater religiousness to their approach to faith, but a church claiming to be more relational simply because their programming or formality lends itself to relational ministry just doesn’t line up with what we understand real relationships to look like. Relationships are and should be things that take time such as trust, communication, reconciliation, and vulnerability. It requires mentors, spiritual leaders, teaching, confession, and accountability. It is a noble desire for an organization to strive for relational ministry, but simply claiming it values relational ministry because it encourages friendliness and encourages participation in small groups isn’t the same things.

Then how then does an emerging believer embrace relationship as an element of authentic spiritual formation? How do I apply my own set of personality traits and temperament to biblical standards? How do I incorporate the dynamic interaction of God’s continual revelation to fundamental Christian ethics? I Corinthians gives us some direction. After giving direction in the Christian call to prioritize love, Paul states:

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

The “Love Chapter” seems like a fairly straight forward description of love and appears to give us solid direction in how to be relational. Be sacrificial and obedient to God’s constant voice giving us direction how to relate with those around us. While I agree, that isn’t the thesis of the passage. It isn’t just about how we relate to others or especially the steps we take to love others. Verse 10 reads, “but when perfect comes, the imperfect disappears.” This chapter is describing how God loves, how God relates, how God is authentic. It is telling us that no matter what we do we will never be able to do anything that compares to the way that God loves us. Verse 11 and 12 demonstrate the frustration of Paul as he realizes this truth.

Keeping in mind that I will likely always have a fairly small group of people that I am truly relational with, I can’t be fully authentic in the way I relate with others until I accept the fact that I will never relate to others fully on my own. I doubt that I will ever be able to know myself completely, much less others. The Love chapter of I Corinthians is a call to accept the pure love of Christ. True authentic interaction can never occur until we see the sacred within others. Jesus says in Matthew 25: 35 and 36, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Being relational isn’t about being in some group or a set of rules for how we treat others, it is about seeing God in others and respecting that sacred presence of Christ.