Recently, my friend Jacob highlighted Randy Frazee (author of “Connecting Church,” and “Making Room for Life”) and Randy’s encouragement to make use of certain tools to aid us in replacing “too many” weak relational connections and build a smaller number of stronger ones.
As a pastor Randy is trying to help the people in his community find the connections they need for life and godliness. He is giving very busy people useful tools to combat loneliness, and he does this well – I know I have read and been enriched by his work.
In “Search to Belong” Joe Myers explores four relational spaces (public, social, personal and intimate) and helps us live into varying “intimacies” of the relationships we already have – very useful and very freeing. What I like about Joe’s work is that he helps us see a context for intimacy while simultaneously helps us see the context of the others relational spaces as well.
My gut tells me that Van Den Berg may be right when he claims most psychological illnesses stem from loneliness – connecting is everything. I am more than the sum of my connections, but nothing without my connections.
Within churches “community-guilt” seems to be moving right up there with “prayer-guilt” and “evangelism-guilt.” We feel shame that we are lonely. After hearing a great sermon about community or relationships we drive to our big empty homes, pull into our garages and sit in front of our TVs and wonder why we’re alone. How come my small group isn’t enough? Why couldn’t my spouse and I find lasting intimacy? Why did my relational life seem more solid in college – and should I try to recreate that experience? Arguably, we are more lonely today than at any point in human history.
Back to Jacob’s question; how does the pursuit of a few intimate relationships connect with my research of God’s Scale free Kingdom, and especially (I’m assuming) my emphasis on the strength of weak links.
The entire scale free construct is dynamic. Nodes die and nodes are born. The birth and death of nodes force remapping. But it is not just nodes which are dynamic – links are as well. Not are relationships are equal.
If we pursue intimacy to the exclusion of other relational space we set ourselves up for deep disappointment. Further, network theory would make a strong case that a life made up of few but strong relationships is more fragile than a life made up of multiple weak links. The more important question to me is how can I live into the relationships that are before me now?
Often when we speak of ‘intimacy’ we’re speaking of a desire for some form of sustained relational depth – the existence of such relationships may be a myth – but that would be a conversation for another time.
peace, dwight
