Being there and really being there

As a younger man, actively involved in the eldership life of our church, I had devised a rather clever (I thought) shortcut strategy. If on a Sunday morning after the service, I could nail down as many people as I could who I needed to link in with on eldership business, I could save myself so many phonecalls during the week. What an opportunity, everybody was there!

So it was that I would often find myself when approached by a person in genuine need, taking regular sneak looks over their shoulder, to check how close brother so and so was to escaping out the door – if need be, bringing my conversation to an abrupt end to engage myself in pursuit of whoever it might be and save myself the golden chalice of “time.” Of course, then the rhythm began all over. Whoever I spoke to was not oblivious to the fact that my mind was on either the next or greater things but then, it served the ultimate purpose – I saved time!

A new song

I slowly learned to deposit with the Lord my heavy load (some of it at times self-imposed), to believe Him for creative ways of connecting with people and getting things done that left me free to focus on the things that really count.

I embraced afresh something I already knew. It has been estimated that every fifth home is in crisis. Our church family is just a microcosm of the population at large.

A suggestion I often make to any congregation I am sharing this with is to select one person or family to spend time with during after-church over coffee. Gently enquire into their circumstances. Make them feel special because they are special. Put flesh on the words of the worshipleader, “We hope you all feel welcome among us today.” The tendency is still there for all of us, to gravitate towards our own cliques. Avoid that! Seek out someone new.

Don’t be constantly looking over their shoulder. Make it clear that as far as you are concerned, no-one else in the room matters, because at that moment, no-one else does. Jim Elliot said, “Wherever you are, be all there!” This is to live in the spirit of Christ.

God wants me to work with the person/ or couple/ or church in front of me at this moment. That is the only work God has for me in this moment.

Scott Peck of The road less travelled fame condensed it to this when he wrote “the principal form that the work of love takes is attention.”¹  When we love someone else, they get our full attention. The greatest gift we can give another is rapt attention to their existence. Our word respect comes from the latin respecare, meaning eye-contact. Respectful engagement involves being fully there for the other, attending to them only and this includes full eye contact (except in matters of cultural sensitivity). It has been said the eye is the window to the soul.

Nicodemus, the woman at the well, would have known Jesus was fully focused on them, fully present in the moment. He would have engaged with them in such a way that they could not help but know their questions and concerns were the most pressing issue in His life for that moment in time. He was never half-there with a person, still doing a postmortem on what happened in the synagogue or his last conversation.

Let’s practise our spiritual muscles more. What would our church look like/become if we were actively working at this?

¹  Scott M Peck, The road less travelled.
Rider 1978, p.120