EL’s Dribble

There are these houses right next to the place that we rent for our monthly worship gatherings. They are boarding houses that cater to mentally impaired adults that fall between the systemic cracks. Not dysfunctional enough to be hospitalized. Not functional enough to be integrated in society.

We’ve been next door to the houses for almost 4 years and have gotten to know a lot of the people. It hasn’t been easy… their range of ailments span widely… schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar, brain damage, psd, prolonged drug/alcohol abuse, etc. – everyone is on some more form of medication. And it hasn’t been easy to connect or love them. The truth is that I think we’re getting over the dirtiness… the smell… the ingrained suburban value that the reason you work hard is to avoid people like this… and getting over taking the easy route of just giving money and withholding the human touch.

I think the biggest struggle for our community when it comes to connecting with our neighbors is being open to integrating our lives with theirs. They aren’t charity cases… they aren’t projects for us to complete. They are people and they like everyone else are dying for someone to acknowledge that their existence in this world matters. That they aren’t alone… that someone cares.

There’s two people named Snappy and Mona. They are good friends and likely 15-20 years apart in age. And they’ve been faithfully coming to our worship times for the past few years… with no one to remind them that it’s on the 3rd Sunday. In this realm they are far more committed than some of our more “functional” people.

Snappy asked me last Sunday, “When are we going to go out to lunch? I owe you lunch!” We did lunch once before and had burritos and he was bent on going back to the same place. It’s got good memories apparently. We go and Snappy asks me politely whether Mona can come and we head over to Super Tacqueria for lengua burritos. That particular day was really packed… I was meeting with several disciple groups, doing some training and preparing for pre-marital counseling. Lots of “work” that day.

But as I was sitting in the sun with Snappy and Mona, two people who may never quite fit into the “brilliant” church structure that I’ve created, I was reminded that I was eating with two of my friends. They enjoyed my company and I enjoyed theirs. They didn’t need anything from me other than me. And I couldn’t expect anything from them other than just them. And I realized that that was enough. They remind me that it’s not always about “getting it done”. They remind me that there’s a human level to everything that gets missed when we’re always functioning on the business side of life. I’m reminded that Jesus doesn’t love me any more and Jesus does love them any less. And that the Gospel makes more sense when we have friends who are physically poor and we can recognize our common inability/desperation/incompetence in life.

Every time Snappy is in my car… he leaves a “residue” on my seat. I really don’t care to guess what it is and it kinda smells. But hey, we’re friends and friends can clean up after each other and look forward to the next burrito date.

I have a friend who asked me about developing small groups. And she said that there’s this tension with developing community and reaching out. Meaning you want to keep the same group so that you can develop trust and then nurture transparency. And we all know that transparency is where the action happens.

But if you reach out and invite new people you take a few steps back on the trust index. And then we’re no closer to transparency nirvana. So she asked me what we do about that.

To be honest I haven’t thought about that for a while. We’re always telling our people to integrate their faith with their life and to then integrate their life with the lives of others. So that there are very few seams in the fabric of our lives. Jesus is spilling over everything.

And it made me think that even the paradigm of community building vs. mission is contrary to the Gospel. If the Gospel is God initiating love for his people… meaning he loved when he knew we didn’t love him back… and we’re to model that love for others, transparency should come before trust. Not trust before transparency. The Gospel always turns stuff upside down.

The world operates on that paradigm. You don’t give anyone your money, time or heart without first determining whether they are trustworthy. They’ve got to earn it. And when they do, then you can leak out a bit of yourself while still maintaining some safeguards. Earning always comes first.

So going back to the small group thing – what if we followed the paradigm of the Gospel and were transparent regardless of trust. I think it would accomplish 2 things:

1. It would reinforce that we believe the Gospel… the Gospel that says that our worth is completely based on what Jesus has done for us and never on what we’ve done. If we believe that Jesus determines our worth, we don’t need to be enslaved by what others say. We’re wholly accepted and loved by God. Isn’t the reason why we’re not tranparent is that we’re afraid of rejection? It becomes a faith exercise and a way of deepening the Gospel within us [isn't that Philippians 2:12?].
2. New people will automatically feel embraced… they’d be pleasantly surprised that people would be willing to share their life without even knowing them. The first time I went to this one group, I heard everyone’s junk… they shared openly and vulnerably, acknowledging their need for God. I automatically felt like I was one of them – they didn’t need to welcome me.

When we live out the Gospel paradigm, community is built and we’re on mission… automatically, without needing to reconcile the two. And I realize that it’s the Gospel’s business to reconcile things that just don’t make any sense, that seem in opposition. Whether it’s people, social systems or ministry methods.

I’m finding that I need to be very aware of whether our medium is also communicating the Gospel. I realize that having such a segmented paradigm contradicts the message of the Gospel. IE. having a small group for community and a small group for evangelism. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think I’m trying to be militant about the integration of everything into one homogenous medium. That’s not right either. I can’t imagine our toddlers and soccer players meshing well [though I'm sure there might be a way that could work]. But I’m finding that I need to ask whether the medium… the means by which we are communicating the Gospel… contradicts the message. If so, we’re in big trouble.