The Eyes Have It

I was going to write today about how regardless of your location, your age, or your situation, it’s still true that the most effective way to grow your church (or any group, really) is by personally inviting people to come with you.  But there are already plenty of places to read about that (here, here, or here,  for instance).  Meanwhile I also like to try to get to the root of things, so it was interesting to me the past couple of days to see that maybe there’s a problem underlying the problem.  (Isn’t there always?)   I was thinking about this underlying problem because I recently read an essay called “Being Ubuntu through Relationship” by Terrance Jacob in Renew 52.  He talks about his experience in consulting with churches that are wanting to do multicultural outreach.  Jacob notes that people tend to focus on the differences between us, and that difference becomes an obstacle to building relationships.  Jacob mentions Ubuntu but doesn’t explain it very much, so I turned to Google (of course) which inevitably lead to Wikipedia.  But unlike usual the Wikipedia article didn’t help me out much.  It did, however,  mention that Ubuntu has African origins.  This got me to thinking about my African friend from my seminary days and how he struggled to connect with his American classmates.  At first his difficulties were language based, but as those difficulties eased the hurdles became more about culture.  He is a very friendly guy, and has a warm greeting for everyone he meets.  But, as he explained to me, in his culture people don’t just breeze past each other with a quick hello like we do.  They stop and talk to each other.  The problem is that we Americans are too busy for that and he was feeling dismissed.  And that got me to wondering whether this busyness isn’t our underlying problem with inviting people to church?  Connecting sounds easy enough, but it’s a bit of a time commitment.  First you have to put yourself in a position to encounter people you don’t know, and then be willing to take the time to talk to them and get to know them.  But what if that other person doesn’t look like me?  Doesn’t act like me?  Doesn’t want to talk to me?  What if they hate me?  What if they pull out a gun and shoot me?  Ok, so that last one is highly unlikely, but it does happen, doesn’t it?

Jacob suggests that we need to be seeking to have conversations with people, and not because we are trying to help them or make them feel welcome, but just because we want to get to know them.  It sounds easy, but I know that it’s not always so simple.  For me part of the key has been just being willing to make eye contact and connect with people.  I spent years avoiding eye contact—always having a book to read on the bus, for instance.  And I know just how to walk with forceful intention so that I look like I’m too intent on getting something done to be distracted by any people that happen to be in the way—you know, looking busy.  And these days we all carry around eye-contact deterrent devices that are just as effective as my book. It’s even become socially acceptable to deliberately ignore people by continually staring at our pocket-sized screens.

Nevertheless, I think it’s possible to overcome these obstacles.  The place to start is with a desire to learn how.  Some prayer will help.  And remember, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible, right? 

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,” -Ephesians 1:18

Tutoring (from December 2007)

She is sad today. She says she broke up with her boyfriend because he lied to her. But the director tells me she passed both her tests and as soon as the next semester starts up at the other building, she will be gone. Maybe we are both thinking that now we are just marking time until then, but neither of us says that. She is surly and doesn’t want to work or talk, but we review what she was doing when I arrived anyway. I give her a phone number I looked up for the wellness center, suggesting that they can help her get a handle on her diet and her sugar levels and then maybe she will feel better, my response to her ongoing complaint over the past few weeks that I’ve been meeting her here. “I’m not depressed,” she blurts out. “Ok,” I respond, not knowing what else to say. She is hard as nails and I think, as we talk, that she begins to act more like herself because she has willed herself into being ok. “I threw his ring down the toilet,” she announces. We’d talked about the ring the day we were reading an article about how diamonds are mined and processed. She was quite interested in that article, and already knew quite a bit about diamonds. She’d told me then that if she he ever broke up with her she would keep that ring. Now it’s lost forever. “Did you get mad at yourself afterwards for throwing the ring down the toilet?” I ask. She says no, but I know I would have been and I know how much she loved that ring.

We didn’t do much work today, but we talked a lot about why she wants to be a vet tech and how she plans to finish college because she thinks it’s stupid that her brothers and sisters have all started and then dropped out. I tell her it’s hard but there’s always someone who can help you, so don’t give up. She is tough and determined now, but I wonder if she is too tough, and maybe that’s why she got sent here from the high school.

Half an hour before we are supposed to be done, her phone is buzzing and she says it is her boyfriend. She had told me she had to leave early to go to the doctor and that her mom was coming to pick her up. She jumped up to look out the window into the parking lot and giddily said, “He’s here.” He? Her dad? Her boyfriend? No time to ask. She packed up her things and headed out the door, wishing me a happy holiday and tossing off, “See you in January.”

I will be back in January, but I wonder if there’s really anything I can do for her. I can listen and give encouragement, and I will go over the math problems she will do over the holiday break. She may tell me then that she reconciled with her boyfriend, or got a new horse for Christmas, or maybe even a new ring. We will only meet 3 times before she moves up to the other building, the last step before the GED and then on to Tech and on with her life. I will wish her well and wonder, then as now, what really brought her here, and what will happen after she’s gone, but I’ll probably never know. And so it goes.