Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)
I was noticing something quite strange last night…
At the boys baseball games last night, we met some friends of our friends last night, and that got me to thinking. They are friends with several of our good friends (we regularly hear their names in conversation), and so we were talking with them about how we all knew each other. Some kinda fun/random circumstances brought everyone together. Very cool. I’m certain that God was wisely directing all of that. (Or at least, none of it surprised him) 🙂
When we started thinking about it, I noticed that most (maybe all?) of the people we spend time with (not just “know”) are not people we met through any “institutional church” structure. That actually really shocked me.
One of the things that I do occasionally wonder about with us not attending weekend services anywhere is just how that keeps us “off the radar”. Even though I find public gatherings quite lacking for any real connecting with people… it is at least a place to see them, and be seen. And I have always also had this (apparently false) notion that most of the people we hang out with we met through “going to church” together.
I guess I was wrong.
Does that mean that we just hang out with the bottom feeding scum who “claim” to follow Jesus but won’t give up a couple measly hours on a Sunday morning to be with other believers? Perhaps. 🙂 But, I don’t think so. A lot of the people we spend time with – speaking of believers – are part of weekend services and more in that setting. Now, definitely several of our friends are in the same place we are with all of that, but I would definitely say not the majority.
Could it possibly mean that such structures do not build the best, most lasting relationships? Could it just be that we did a poor job of doing that? Maybe both? Maybe something else? I really don’t have the answer.
I know that our friends who just moved to Maryland definitely have some great, close, deep friendships with people whom they met via their “church”. And certainly that can happen. I found it completely fascinating that it is not true for us. Most of the Christians we spend time with we met through various other settings and endeavors. So crazy!
There’s really no point to this, other than to share that interesting observation, and to just throw that question out there to you. Could this show that good friendships with other believers not only can happen outside of the institutional church structure, but perhaps even be better? (Better doesn’t really fit here as relationships are not really quantifiable, as that qualifier would suggest. I just mean, deeper, more lasting, going beyond conversations simply when you’re in the same place.)
If you have any thoughts, please do post your comments.
Unless the institutional structures weren’t meant to build relationships at all, which is probably closer to the truth. They’re meant, supposedly, to “worship” which is sort of a public profession of one’s loyalty. Very nationalistic, really. Relationships are a decentralized concept; once institutionalized, they are morphed beyond recognition. And so it’s no wonder to me that if you value relationships the way you say you do, that you do church in a decentralized structure. And yes, there’s still structure there, just of a very different sort than you might find in a denominational context.