Aspect #4: Communities Entangled

Before we talk about entangled communities, I just wanted to take this chance to show you the kitchen ceiling at Grandview. The sprinkler system that is supposed to save us during our fiery emergencies has frozen and exploded again. Special thanks to Carla McKinney, Maggie Schade, Gene Nix and Neal Voke for being the first responders.

Here is Neal as he continues to handle all of the hubbub that comes with a water pipe mishap.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Aspect #4: Communities Entangled

Welcome to the final installment in this short series on aspects of Grandview that are our weaknesses and strengths all at once. This final topic is a little tricky because it’s something I witness more than I experience--so I may be way off base. Feel free to correct me, enlighten me, challenge me, or affirm me on this issue (on any of the issues, but on this one in particular).

Bob Owens once told me that it was sometimes difficult to go to church with the same people you know at work. He likened it to a fish bowl. He isn’t the only one who has mentioned this to me.

Imagine you are staff or faculty at a school (maybe you don’t have to imagine this) and you work with someone who has a different vision of Christian education than you. Also, this person thinks that the direction of the college or seminary should be very different than the one you prefer. Now throw in the fact that when tensions rise you see flaws in this person, even as you expose your own flaws.

Shall we throw another level of difficulty into the equation? Imagine that on Sunday morning you go to worship God and THAT VERY PERSON is giving the communion meditation. Suddenly, your desire to focus on forgiveness and love and the power of God to heal relationships is being outflanked by a person who is grating on your last nerve.

I can see how working and worshiping with the same set of fallen characters could be a distraction. The closest I come to this is when I’m holding a grudge against someone and I have to stand up and preach the undeserved, overwhelming, free grace of God. If you have never been in an extended “discussion” with your spouse and then tried to walk to the pulpit and preach on forgiveness then I highly recommend the humiliation that wreaks on your soul.

Let’s deepen the entanglement, shall we? Milligan and Emmanuel are sister institutions, but they aren’t the same institutions. When one institution speaks the other one doesn’t necessarily say, “Amen.” Not only that, their funding sources are often entangled as well. Not deep enough yet? How about this: When I became the senior minister of Grandview, Dan Lawson was the chair of the elders. Dan is the guy who asks me for money for Emmanuel ... and he was my boss at the same time.

Wait, wait ... it gets better. I’m now a trustee at Emmanuel and that makes me a part of the board that oversees the Presidency of Mike Sweeney at Emmanuel. Mike is a member at Grandview and, as such, has some say over my job as well. Let’s not stop yet; we’re on a roll! Grandview gives money to Emmanuel and Milligan. Emmanuel and Milligan staff and faculty give money to Grandview. And we’re all answerable to each other in official, unofficial, and sometimes annoying ways.

How great and twisted is this!

You can guess some of the strengths and weaknesses of these circumstances. The weakness is that some folks are tempted to withdraw from the church emotionally. I understand why. People only have so much emotional and spiritual strength and we kind of hate to summon it for something that strikes us as voluntary after summoning it all week at work. And, like it or not, people slip into the mistake of viewing the church as a voluntary institution. Never mind that Jesus didn’t institute college or seminary, but did institute the church. With the exception of the church staff, the church doesn’t pay our bills, so when we’re feeling emotionally and spiritually tapped out, the church is the easiest place to cut.

Now to the strength of the entangled community. The anonymity of contemporary culture doesn’t really allow the church to encourage discipleship on difficult issues. If I challenge somebody on something in his life and he doesn’t like my challenge, he can too easily slip away and start attending a church where nobody will notice or challenge him. In fact, if he looks like a decent chap, when he shows up at the new church they might even put him in charge.

Only when our communities are hideously entangled do we discover that sooner or later our flaws will be uncovered. Once uncovered, maybe we’ll take seriously the need to apply God’s standards to our flaws.

If your job situation causes you to resonate with what I’ve written, allow me to challenge you to make some friends at church with people who aren’t in your workplace fish bowl. There are plenty of those folks here. If you’re reading this and you’re not part of this entanglement, thank you for being the kind of person who can help bring fresh air from the outside! God can use you at Grandview in marvelous ways.

Please make it a priority to form kingdom friendships that God can use to bless others. The strongest of these bonds will be formed when we invite people who are not like us to become a part of our lives. When that happens we are truly living BEYOND ourselves.