Let's face it. For most us, we spend our community discipleship existence in age-divided silos. Elementary age children are with kids of the same ages or grades. Middle and high school years are full of small groups of other awkward, raging-hormone-afflicted teenagers. College is accompanied for many by parachurch ministries like Young Life, Campus Crusade, or similar others. And for the first 11 years of our marriage, Natalie and I have been in or led small groups -- what we call Community Groups at Origins -- of mostly people in their 20s and early 30s. Birds of a feather...
And its great because everyone is basically dealing with the same stuff as those they are "sharing life" with. In elementary school its about obeying parents and not being a bully as we are taught to trust Jesus. In middle and high school its about having a quiet time each day and avoiding the perils of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as we are taught to trust Jesus. In college its about choosing the right major, career, and mate as we are taught to trust Jesus. And then in our young adult lives its about charting the course of our lives and being more "cool" as parents or as a couple than our parents were...as we are taught to trust Jesus. Obviously I'm being sarcastic and over-simplistic. But we get the point: Our discipleship journey is made to be lived in community with other followers of Jesus, and usually we group up or are grouped up based on our age or stage of life.
Until this year. Natalie and I are in our early and late thirties, respectively, with two sons, ages 6 and 3. Teresa, our neighbor, is a young empty nester who is seeking to walk with Jesus in community but is unable to worship in a church on Sunday because of work commitments. Cathy, our friend, is an empty nester also who was nervous about being in community with "kids" (like Natalie and I and many in our church) and wondered what the group would think of her and her non-attending husband who doesn't follow Jesus. Hal is a young twenty-something graphic designer who attends our group as well as a couple of others with folks his age. And then there's Ken and Judy, with their amazing daughters, Jessie, Lacey, and Alice, who are ages 22, 17, and 13. So we have two not yet 10, two in their teens, two in their twenties, two in their thirties, three in their forties, and one in her fifties. No one is really coming from the same place as it concerns age, life stage, background, church history, or anything else. And I have done a poor job of leveraging the diversity of our group.
How does the diversity of our group become the strength of our group, particularly when most of us are used to a silo approach of dividing people into groups simply based on age? How can our differences, which feel quite vast to me at times, bring us together and make us more like Jesus? Why have I seen this situation as a place where I am not a great leader rather than as a place where God can show up and teach us about unity in diversity?
A couple of observations:
- Our greatest identity marker, as Christians, is Christ. "Christ-follower" or "Christian" becomes the noun, and all other identifiers become merely adjectives. So we are no longer old or young, white or any other color, poor or rich, married or unmarried people who also happen to follow Jesus. Rather we are old or young Christians, white or black or Asian or Hispanic Christians, poor or rich Christians, married or unmarried Christians. Only my relationship with God can carry the full weight of my identity; every other marker must bow a knee to Jesus and his saving grace. So Paul wrote in Galatians 3 that in the Church there aren't racial, economic, and social divisions but all of us are in Christ and Christ is in all of us. We are family, despite our outward differences. So despite our ages and life stages, as a community group of Jesus followers, we have the main thing in common.
- Our greatest differences never have to get the final say. What makes us different will tear us apart or bring us together. (Cue a clip from Remember the Titans, Hoosiers, Bad News Bears, or any other host of sports movies as case in point.) How any small group responds to obstacles says a ton about the value they think the group has for our individual relationship with Jesus. If we fight through the differences for community and to all become more like Jesus, we are saying that it matters. If we get up and sit quietly because we think there's nothing to be gained, then we are saying the group can't teach us anything and that we have nothing to offer such a diverse group of people.
- Further, the things that make us similar to one another can end up making us less like Jesus because we cease to or come up short of connecting around the Gospel and end up connecting around other things...and compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus, those "other" things are always lesser things. Our silo approach may make us more comfortable with each other, seducing us into believing we are becoming disciples in community when we are really just an unchanged or unmoved gathering of friends answering some questions about Jesus or the Bible.
- How do we leverage our differences? What does the 13 year-old have to offer the soon-to-be 50 year-old? When you and I can accept that the Spirit in us is the same Spirit in that young teenager, then we understand that we all have something to offer and to receive in community. Each of us has a word to be given and to be received, and our various ages and stages give a perspective that others do not have. What is obvious to a 25 year-old may be confounding to this 38 year-old. And what is plain-as-day truth to the 17 year-old may be unclear to the 55 year-old. We need each other's perspectives because we all have blind spots, and God gives us the church (and our little community groups) to lovingly speak to us about what we do not naturally see as we follow Jesus.
So I've wrestled with how to make our group great. And the question I want to ask as we read the Bible together or pray together or eat caramel-drenched popcorn and catch up on the week together is, "How do you see this?" Or, "Is there something you see or think or feel or believe that I am not seeing here?" These ten diverse perspectives (I'm excluding my kids...they're just watching Transformers Rescue Bots on Netflix and eating sweets mostly -- both subjects they've mastered, by the way), give us ten different angles to see an opportunity, a prayer request, a confusing scripture, or a major -- or minor -- life decision. Ten different eyes looking at a blind spot from ten different sets of life experiences, educational or professional resumes, faith journeys, and more.
So here's to you Alice, Lacey, Jessie, Hal, Natalie, Teresa, Judy, Ken, and Cathy. Thank you for this new season of faith and community. I pray we spur one another on to love and good deeds in Christ, in community.
