What Ties Bind You?

Christian Perspectives Article for the New Castle Courier Times 07-26-08

There’s an old church hymn with these lyrics: Blest be the tie that binds / Our hearts in Christian love / The fellowship of kindred minds / Is like to that above. What are the ties that bind you to your local fellowship of Christ-followers?

For many church-goers, the only connecting point is that we meet in the same building once a week. The advent of the automobile and the increasing desire for personal preference in worship styles has effectively eliminated the “neighborhood church”. We rarely worship with our next-door neighbors. Instead, we drive some distance to find “just-the-right” church.

But what happens when we don’t see our fellow worshipers during the week? What do we miss when we only see each other on Sunday mornings?

Those weekly meetings are staged, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, facing forward and listening. When do we sit across the table, and share face-to-face about our struggles and joys? What are the ties, or connection points, that bind us to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ through the week?

When someone is hurting because of a broken relationship, do we find out because of direct interaction with that person? Or do we find out through that particularly Christian form of “sharing” called the prayer chain? Prayer chains are fine, but when do we have the opportunity to personally minister the grace and peace of Christ to someone who is hurting? Those opportunities usually happen within the context of a meaningful ongoing relationship.

The only way we can be in the right place at the right time is to be in the right place to begin with. This might sound redundant but explore the idea with me. How can we minister to people with whom we have little or no contact? How can we connect with people we only see for ninety minutes, one day a week? When the right time comes along, will be in the right place?

What will it require, in rescheduling our lives, to create new ties that bind? How can we “live life together” more effectively? The early Christians were known for gathering daily to talk and eat and share and minister. When someone had a need, the rest of them sold personal belongings and addressed the need together, as a community. But they couldn’t have addressed the need together if they were never drawn together.

Togetherness deepens our understanding of each other, our trust for each other, our accountability to each other, and our compassion for each other. Separateness breeds misunderstanding, mistrust, and cynicism, and opens the door for all kinds of behavior that dishonors God. We fail in our mission, when we fail to interact with other believers and the rest of the world.

What are the ties that bind you to other believers? If it’s just a car and a spot on a bench for an hour-and-a-half, that tie is very fragile: handle with care. What can you do today to improve those ties? What will you have to give up in order to spend more time with brothers and sisters in Christ, not to mention those who have no relationship with him?

The Well Of Community Is Dry

Courier-Times, New Castle, IN - July 8, 2006

I hear it all the time. The problems all seem different, but they have the same source. “People just aren’t committed any more.” “We have to cancel the meeting, we can’t get a quorum.” “I just don’t understand them, how can they think that way?” “I can believe it. Another minister (or lay person) is going down in flames!” “I just don’t trust him anymore.” “I don’t understand why people don’t give to the church like they used to.”

All of these issues in life, both inside and outside of the church, flow from one well. Actually, these are all problems that indicate a lack of flow from a well that has nearly run dry. That well is what we used to call community.

We still believe that we have community and that we live in community, but rarely to 21st century Americans experience genuine community. We used to sit on our front porch and wave at the neighbors driving down the street, or those tending to their own front porch. Now we stay inside our air-conditioned homes and watch the latest sitcom on TV.

We used to gather the entire family, or neighborhood around the TV to watch the Ed Sullivan Show or pre-WWF wrestling. Now we have four TVs in a household of three and, if we all happen to be in the house at the same time, we are watching at least three different stations in three different rooms.

People used to show up for Sunday Evening service, even non-church-goers, just to be with the rest of the community. Now church is a second thought if it even ends up in our minds at all.

What we are witnessing is the drying up of the well of community, what researchers call social capital. Fewer people are participating in group activities and more and more are participating in solo activities. We bowl alone, eat alone, commute to work alone, play video games alone, surf the web alone. We have fewer common experiences. We watch television shows designed for our specific demographic. We stop listening to the local radio station (a common experience) and start listening to our I-Pods (a personal experience). We’ve even stopped worshiping together and demanded “our own style of worship service.”

Often, as a result, we don’t trust each other, we don’t understand each other, we don’t work together, we don’t pool our resources like we once did, and we are more likely to fail when it comes to moral accountability. There is a reason why God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Even before the fall of humankind, and the first act of sin, there was something in the garden that was not good and that something was aloneness.

It is not good to be alone. But we live in a culture that elevates the personal preference over the common good. If we are to replenish the dried up well of community, we will have to make intentional decisions to make it happen. Community doesn’t happen accidentally in American culture. We must decide to recapture or reinvent community. That’s where you come in.

When was the last time you invited someone over after church, or after the game, and just sat around the backyard and talked? When was the last time you talked to your neighbor down the street? When was the last time you turned off the technology and ate dinner together as a family? When was the last time you and your spouse had a casual conversation that didn’t anticipate an end result or by-product? Only you have the power to make community happen in your life. It is not good for you or me to be alone.

You can make a difference and help replenish the well of community, and I hope you make an effort to do just that.