New Wineskins: A Conversation with Sally Morgenthaler Great Interview. (HT Dana Ames)
Yet, according to Joseph Myers, in The Search to Belong, the Church doesn't really converse very well. He contends that there are four levels of human interaction, of "conversation." From least intimate to most, they are: public, social, personal, and intimate. The reality is, the church only operates marginally well in one area, and that is public. Even at that level, our public events and services are simply a collection of privatized experiences. They are usually not as communal as a football game. There, the jumbo-tron acts as presider and prompts us to high-five each other or yell at each other across the stadium.
Ironically, the Church thinks it's also good at intimacy. When we can't even do public well, why would we think that we'd be good at the last level? Go figure. Joe Myers points out that human beings can only be truly intimate with spouses and significant others. He contends that what most people are looking for when they join a small group is not intimacy, but interaction on levels two and three, the social and the personal. (An example of the social conversation would be, "Wow, did you hear that Ed's property is being courted by Wal-Mart?" The more personal would sound like, "We just found out that my youngest son has a kidney problem.") True intimacy goes a big step further from the personal. It is the ultimate in vulnerability—an emotional nakedness, if you will. With spouses, it includes physical nakedness. No wonder people don't exactly run to the sign-up table when we have Small Groups Sunday! What we have created in most of our small groups is faux-intimacy, and it sets us up for failure on a grand scale.
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