His Friends: New Community

I invited a friend to join a new small group that my wife and I were starting. He asked me what to expect. I wanted to say something impressive, but I no longer think the hype works. So I texted him back: "Our strategic plan is to love God and each other. We'll pray and see what God might do. That's the whole thing."

In my first year out of college, as a new campus minister, a student asked me, "Why do you spend so much time with Christians?" I trusted her enough to say, "I don't like the hyper-competitive social dynamics everywhere else. I just do better when I'm around people who love God." Her jaw dropped. She thought I would sound more spiritual.

A friend shared in a small group, "I think y'all are Christians because you want to be good people. And you are good people." Another friend shook her head and scrunched her shoulders. Then she said, "No, actually, I have to correct the record. That's not right. My life was a mess, and I tried everything I could think of to fix my problems. None of it worked." She went on, "And so one day, I just said to Jesus, 'I give up. You have to deal with all of this.' And he did! He started to change everything. I'm not a Christian because I'm a good person, but because I didn't know what to do and Jesus showed up."

"Oh God, send us spiritual mothers and fathers, we beg you!" My eyes widened and my heart pounded. I'd never heard anyone ask God for this, but the pained, almost guttural plea came from a dear friend who lay prostrate on the floor. Many years later, I remembered his prayer when the reports came out that his boss, who had positioned himself as a "spiritual father" to younger Christian leaders, was fired for spiritual abuse.

I once joined a discipleship group that met at 5:30 am on Wednesday mornings. The disciple-maker who led it taught slowly, so everyone could write down what he said about Greek verbs in their notebooks. Even though I lived next door to him, he never offered to spend time together outside of the discipleship meetings. After losing sleep for a couple of months, I decided it would be easier to get the same content from books. The next week, when I woke up at a more reasonable hour, I felt happy that I hadn't gone to the discipleship meeting, and I never went again.