A good and frustrating (and so maybe good) night for me last night.
Sunday nights tend to be harder for me as the day is so long. I'm usually at it pretty early, refining my sermon or working on last minute details. And If I've preached, then done something like lead a new people's group, there's not a whole lot left in the tank for Sunday evening. But yesterday I wasn't preaching at our 3rd/evening gathering, so it was a little less of an issue.
First, the good. Last night I kept Jack, our 5 year old with me in the gathering the whole time. He did (mostly) great. We could probably think of it in terms of thirds. The first third he was excited to be with us (the cookie I promised him helped), he actually read the words and sang aloud (loudly! No discernible tune!) to the first song. And THAT was the highlight of my evening. Seeing Jack engage in what we were doing was wonderful for me- it's not an exaggeration (though maybe an overly-flowery way of saying it) to say my heart swelled with joy to see my son worshiping Jesus. Probably the highlight of my week.
Of course, the second third where I was just trying to keep him quiet and the last third where he was almost in tears and saying "I hate it in here!" were a little different story, but... baby steps!
But that wasn't the frustration.
As a community, we've always been on the young side. And in fact, over the last 5 years together, we've actually gotten younger- we have more people under 25 than over 35. So we've always talked about how cool it would be if we had more gray hair among us (I guess my beard doesn't cut it).
But two things generally happen when older folks step into one of our gatherings.
The first is that they genuinely seem to like the community, participate, have encouraging words for us afterwards and end up hanging with us for a week or two. And when they find a lack of people in their life-stage, they move on. This has happened so consistently, I've actually developed a speech around it. "Hey! So glad you are here! These young folks really, really need you! The reason you don't see others like you around is that they tend to come and not see people like themselves and move on. So if you can hang out for a bit, be patient, pretty soon others closer to your age will come along and they'll see you here..."
Yes, it's desperate. But they always totally understand the dynamics. AND they always move on. Sigh.
Then there's the other "older person" experience. They tend to interact in a totally different way.
We have a more open format than many communities- we still preach, but there are a lot of places along the way where we're asking for interaction, where people are talking to the whole community, or asking questions... and that means a risk. People often ask- "What about heresy?? You open things up like that, and people are going say stuff that's wrong!" Indeed- people often say things that are wrong, including the one with the lapel mic, but that's never really been an issue. The group is mature enough to self-correct- to say when someone floats an idea that is pretty off-base something like "Well, another way to look at that would be..." or "I'm not sure that really gets at what God is saying here" or even "I disagree!" It's a beautiful thing.
The thing we tend to struggle with though, is not the person who says egregiously wrong things, but the person who says egregiously much. And in my experience, some of the folks who tend to be most excited by the opportunity to speak and, ahem, avail themselves of the opportunity our community provides the most are the older folks. They almost always mean well, but quite often it comes over with a "Let me correct ALL the misconceptions you are all laboring under" kind of vibe.
And we're a pretty polite bunch, so no one is going to say "Hey- you are talking waaay too much! Let someone else speak!"
Last night we had something like that happen, not a big deal, but a good reminder to me: We often dream about the people we want to see come to our communities. But that's not who God usually brings.
As Henri Nouwen said, "Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives." For us, in our context, that often looks like the guy who talks a little too much, wants to make the conversation more about him and what he thinks than anything else... and we bear that burden because we believe that's a piece of genuine, authentic community. The impulse to make everything just the way we want it, to quality-control everything has to be pushed down in favor of the idea that God may want to do something different than what we thought needed to be done in a particular gathering.
Sometimes He may want to bring us wisdom and sage words through the mouth of someone who's lived longer than anyone else in the room.
And sometimes, He may just want to teach us patience.
