soup, bathwater and the baby

Last week I was talking with a friend who told me that he was experiencing great Christian community as a group of friends were meeting simply to eat soup together. It is organic, not contrived, and everyone likes each other. Sounds great, right? But he was growing increasingly frustrated with his soup group. He said that he wanted to continue to experience the community, but also wanted to be challenged to follow Christ more deeply. In fact he said that if anyone were to bring up the bible or prayer – that it was simply dismissed as cliché. The soup group was designed to be organic (not programmed) and focus on community (rather than individualism). But what my friend was experiencing was swinging the pendulum to its extreme. In an effort to be authentic and community focused, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. So there is my cliche, which is really weird because right now as I write my baby is in the bath.... oh well.

I have to be honest that I feel this very same tension as a pastor. There have been a handful of times where I have gone to the hospital to visit someone that I don’t know. A generation ago, that was a huge part of the pastor’s job, but not so much now. I remember feeling almost inauthentic to pray or share a scripture with someone I didn't know. And I remember driving away thinking I was the worst pastor ever for hesitating to pray or share scripture. When we are trying to make correctives (and even helpful ones), we often throw the proverbial baby out too. I am all for throwing the inauthentic, individualistic, programmed water out, but I want to make sure that we don't get to the point where prayer, scripture and spiritual formation become cliche. Because I still believe that is what we are about.

Last week I sat in my community group and watched as one friend truly challenged another friend with scripture in order to be more like Christ. There was nothing cliche about it. He had lived in authentic community for 2 years with him and was able to share truth in a way that no one else could have shared.

There are many things that we need to change about the church, etc, but we should all make sure when we are making correctives, that we don't lose the things that make us distinctively Christian.