My calendar said that I would be attending the annual Mission Developer’s Training Event in Minneapolis. The schedule said that Saturday evening would be free. My Facebook friends list said that I have several high school classmates living in the Minneapolis area. So I wrote to one of my friends and asked if she and her husband would have me – and any other classmates available – over for dinner so we could catch up.
(Both of my friends have read this post and have agreed to allow me to share my take on our conversation.)
It began as a “catch up” conversation. “So, where has life taken you – educationally, vocationally, relationally, and spiritually – since the day we graduated from college?” It was an absolutely fascinating conversation. As holy of a time as time can get. It was also, for me at least, what it feels like to make a relational connection with people, meeting them where they are, asking the “God” question, which lies at the heart of evangelism.
All three of us went off to college. I sailed through in four years, they each went through in fits and starts, still trying to find themselves and their path. I went to graduate school, they both found jobs in sales/marketing. Two of us had been divorced, the third waited to marry until she was 31. We all have kids. All of our kids have had difficult issues of one sort or another. They both now live relatively close to their families of origin. One lived in Denver for seven years, decided she had missed to many significant family events, so she moved back to be closer. I live a long long way from my sisters.
I’ve changed jobs in the past 18 months and am adjusting to what that means. One of my friends has been working in the same industry for the past 20 years and has experienced it getting more and more difficult, more and more competitive, and is now at an age (all three of us are) where younger employees are more attractive than mid-career and older employees. One of my friends lost her job last week.
We have all faced health issues of one sort or another, both our physical health and our mental health. One is a cancer survivor. I’ve battled with deeply rooted depression off and on through my life.
Perhaps there is a part of us that will always suffer from a case of “terminal uniqueness”, thinking that we are the only ones to go through what we go through. But I’m not so sure. If we ever created room and space to have the kind of trusting conversation I shared with my friends on Saturday night we might discover that the life is a journey of peaks and valleys for all of us.
So it is that our conversation turned more directly to spirituality. Both of my friends have been life long Roman Catholics. One was deeply rooted in her faith. It has always been a source of meaning, identity and solace in her life. The other “went to church” but “didn’t get anything out of it.” My own experience with organized religion was bizarre, fits and starts, until I finally landed in the Lutheran tribe in college.
In our talking, spirituality (our own sense of connectedness to God, others, life) was woven back into and out of religion (the shared expression of spirituality within the structures of a particular community). We talked about the “rules” we have run into regarding our faith communities and their stances toward marriage, divorce, remarriage and the diversity of experiences others have had.
It was fascinating in our conversation – and in our lives – how spirituality, religion, personal relationships and personal maturation, all dance together in some kind of a frenetic mosh pit illuminated by moments of brilliant light, sudden darkness, and chaotic breathlessness. Life feels like we make it up as we go…but – our faith assures us – we are also BEING made up as we go.
And that is what it means to meet people where they are. To listen and join in relationship from the perspective of people who trust that there is a God who connects all of us, is connected to all of us, and is accessible to us. That is what we know and trust as people of faith and that is what secular people are, knowingly or not, hungry to know.
One of my friends talked about her occasional frustration with the Roman Catholic church but also her ongoing devotion, participation, and love of traditional worship and traditional spiritual practices. Yet she continues to be open-minded and curious in her spirituality.
My other friend described her journey of discovery that has taken her to a deeper involvement in a large Baptist congregation. She had no plans of getting involved there but was very surprised to discover an intersection between her needs and the ministry of the congregation. She likes contemporary worship. She talked about how her faith has grown and developed, primarily through sharing with others – in large group/small group Bible studies, and in personal conversations with a 70 year old person who functions as her spiritual director, her discipler. This friend was the one who point blank said, “Organized religion has to change.”
The Christian faith hasn’t “fixed” any of our lives. But we have been caught in life giving ways.
I’m sharing all of this with you because the title of this blog is “Mission Possible.” I want to reassure you that it IS possible that we, in our lives and through our congregations, really can continue to be both faithful and fruitful. But we will NOT get there if we continue to argue about arcane theological tidbits, if we continue to speak in clichés, worship like it is 1952, allow congregational life to be rote and shallow, ignore the ancient spiritual disciplines, and expect people to join US rather than, full of humility and passion, surrendering together to God.
I am convinced that every one of our congregations have people just like my two friends sitting in their pews and living in their surrounding community…and many of them feel frustrated, unheard and lonely. We need to be creating space for them. We need to take seriously the hunger that people have for spirituality and connectedness.
We need to do what God does for us – God meets us where we are and then walks with us to see that we don’t stay there. God walks especially with us through the shared journey that is full participation in a community of faith, a community where conversations like this happen with regularity. That is what evangelism is all about.
