Tuesday, September 14, 2010
“I can’t relate to anyone fully” (Of course you can’t!)
Had another interesting discussion recently.
It was concerning friendships within church and the old chestnut of “finding people to relate to”.
I think it’s a fact that churches are a hotch potch of people following Jesus. And in a small church that oft means that the likely hood of getting real buddy buddy with people and truly being on the same wavelength is actually pretty low. Ive experienced this myself. We concluded that quite possibly most poeple have sat at home thinking “I cant really relate to people that much at church”. [Perhaps we’re not supposed to?*]
Our way of negotiating this “problem” we figured was to thank God for those friendships which gave us some aspect of “The Superbuddy”. It may be that we don’t have the kind of super buddyness that the characters of FRIENDS are portrayed as having but yet as we look at our church as a whole, there are people who give us different aspects of the ‘relating spectrum’. One may be hospitable but not chatty, another we be able to talk deep with on occasion, another may make us laugh and another inspire us? And likewise we of course may provide one or more of those friendship roles to others. As a collective we have a huge wealth of real support & friendship even if we’re not “buzzing” off each other all the time.
I think we’ve also experienced the same with our spouses. One might think that they should be all things to us in terms of friendship but this is not our experience. Though they are truelly our best friends we also have to realise that they are not God and they are not The Body of Christ. We definitely need the wider body of people to function wholly in relationship.
[As an aside I often consider you’re not really close in friendship until you’ve upset someone and they you! I don’t aim for that but is it an indicator of how real you’ve got? ;-) ]
Community baby! Bring it on.
*Is this indeed a God thing? Meant to help keep us looking outward rather than just basking in our sunny friendship huddle, enjoying the rays?
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1 comment:
Hey.. I'm a little late to the party but I'm now a blog "follower" ;) May the brain gymnastics begin....!
On this subject, I've often been struck by 'seasons' of friendship, as we all have experienced that not all friendships last forever, and they inevitably seem to go through many cycles of familiarity for a variety of reasons, eg. moving house/moving church/gradually growing apart (not necessarily in a bad way, just a natural way as times and things change). But God draws us alongside eachother through different seasons for different reasons.
Anyway, back on your topic, I love the different dynamics of friendship that you mention and how as a body we each don't have to be all things to all people. Good to be reminded of this on occasion :)
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