Dear Church:

In her 2018 book, “The Lost Discipline of Conversation: Surprising Lessons Drawn from the English Puritans,” Talbot Seminary professor Joanne J. Jung observed, “The growing epidemic of social isolation is killing us.” And that was before COVID!

Our inability to engage each other well is certainly making us more anxious, and it is shredding our institutions. In 1992, the Southern Californian, Rodney King, during the civil unrest that gripped Los Angeles, asked, “Can’t we all just get along?” A generation later, we barely know each other, let alone get along with other. It’s almost as if we were to ignore one another more effectively, we just might get through the day.

The triple cocktail of post-Christendom’s ruining of our narrative and institutional coherence, made more challenging through post-pandemic social and political polarization, and topped off by digital hyper-connectivity seem to conspire together to keep us apart, and thus causing us to become more and more anxious.

After recently re-reading Jung’s book, I have begun to wonder if the anxiousness we seem to feel across MCUSA is related to a growing experience of denominational social isolation. In a denomination that is roughly 1/3 the size it was when we formed MCUSA in 2001, my guess is we know fewer and fewer people outside our congregation, and certainly outside our conference. While I have something of an excuse (serving from 2006-2021 in the Brethren-in-Christ Church), I am surprised at how few leaders I know currently serving across the denomination.

So, I’m going to make a suggestion to y’all, my Blooming Glen sisters and brothers: In this next month, between now and the Mosaic Conference delegate assembly, go talk to each other. I encourage you to reach out to someone you KNOW you disagree with on whatever issue that fuels you right now and talk with them. If it were me, we would do it over a coffee, but you do you. Just reach out. Talk about whatever. The weather. Your grandchildren. The Eagles. A novel you’ve just finished. The election. LGBTQ inclusion in the church. The Mosaic Pathways Proposal. The Second Coming. Whatever. Just talk. And more importantly, just listen to each other. Researchers have found that the typical gap between turns in conversations can be as little as 200 milliseconds. At least take a breath before you reply.

The greatest gift we can give each other in the next month is to become non-anxious: to just be present with each other and confer with each other about what is on our hearts. True, genuine Christian community is meaningful in dialogue, intentional in engagement, and selfless in attentive listening. None of us will do it perfectly. Our skills in conferencing with each other have atrophied over several generations. But try, please. For the sake of God’s kingdom, relax, breathe, and have a non-anxious conversation with whomever you KNOW is dead wrong. See what happens to your soul.

Let’s go, church (and confer with each other),

Pastor Jeff

jeff@bgmc.net

P.S. I’ll be at the A&N Diner on Monday, October 7, 21, and 28, at 7:30-8:45am to listen to whatever is on your mind (I’m in Los Angeles on October 12-14). I’ll also be at the Broad Street Grind on Friday, October 4, 11, 18, and 25, at 3:30-4:45pm, also to listen to whatever is on your mind.