I Joined Facebook Today

One of my fellow clergypersons, a good friend, invited me in. I'm amazed at who I found there! I'm amazed at how many people choose to share and to connect this way. And it got me thinking.

I guess we're all always looking for convenient ways to connect. The key word there is "convenient." I wonder if we, in our fast-paced world, are looking for mock-community. I wonder if that's because we don't know how to live in true community. We want community, but we don't know how to have it. We think autonomy and independence and privacy are the highest virtues. Don't get me wrong; I as much as anyone think e-communication has its place, and can be a very good thing (why else would I be blogging?) Still, hear me out...

As a pastor, I keep secrets from my parishioners all the time. All clergymen and women do. I'm not speaking of my own secrets necessarily, though I do keep my private life as private as possible (why?). The secrets of which I speak now, though, are the ones whispered to me across my desk through tears, when no one else can hear. They are the secrets church-people don't want anyone else they worship with to know.

How sad. How sad it must make the Lord that his followers can't be real with one another. How sad it is that we refuse to share our darkest secrets with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to invite them to pray with us through our trials and help us to conquer whatever would destroy us. How sad that we just can't discuss certain things, for fear of judgment or retribution or exclusion. How sad that we prize the convenience, autonomy, and privacy of virtual-relationships and over the work and reward, and maybe even saving power, of authentic, one-to-one, flesh-touching-flesh, voice-speaking-to-heart, truth-in-the-open, share-everything, forgive-and-walk-beside relationships.

I don't believe it will be so in the kingdom of God. So I have a "modest proposal" (as a fellow United Methodist Pastor writes in our conference's newspaper). What if we in the church tried to find more and more ways each day for people to really connect in authentic and deep ways? What if we invited ourselves and others to share truly, from the heart? What if we invited each other into our home lives, our family relationships, our checkbooks, our secret worlds? Could we then maybe help each other be more fully alive to God and to each other? Could we maybe then move toward the day when all are in full communion with the Lord and each other? What would our church look like then? What gift might we have to give the world? I don't know. It's just a thought.