• What is actually said.
• What is heard.
• and What is meant.

And rarely do these three play well together.

I see this all the time with clients and friends, especially via email. They will often say (or write) something that sounds condescending, then I talk to them later and realize what they really meant. Or they will ask for something in an email, assuming I know where they are coming from when I often do not. So, in the midst of learning to better communicate with my clients, friends, and family, I have a few suggestions to improve this art.

1. When speaking don’t assume something about the person you are speaking to, if your assumption happens to be wrong, or even slightly off it will throw off everything you are trying to say and cause confusion.
2. When you are listening to someone, actually listen, don’t start formulating your response, half listening is the same as not listening at all. This is a good one to remember when talking to your spouse.
3. When listening, once the person complets their entire thought say, “This is what I’m hearing” and summerize what they said. Then ask if you are correct in what you heard. The conversation takes a little longer, but there will be no miscommunication happening. This is a good one when talking to the opposite sex, since men and women think so differently.
4. Assume the best in people. When talking to someone or reading a client email, don’t assume they are being condescending just because you read it that way. It is pretty likely that is your issue surfacing, not theirs.
5. Talk face to face when possible. Being able to see a person when speaking to them provides a lot of clarity about the heart behind what they are saying. If you can’t talk face to face, talk on the phone because voice inflection also helps bring clarity.

I confess, I know how to communicate well, but as my wife will tell you, I often don’t use that knowledge. But I’m working on it, and I hope you are too.

I’m sure that statement seems off at first, but if you think about it, who do you typically offend the most, the people that you are closest to, right? You will have to ask for forgiveness from your best friend or spouse far more often than you will ask from it from your employer or another acquaintance. This is because with those we are closest to we are more willing to be ourselves, which also means that we stop trying to look good all the time and we let the ugly things in our lives loose.

I think this is a good thing. One of the things that has always bothered me about the many forms of church with which I have been involved is that the relationships within those bodies rarely go deep. I can think of only a handful of times that I have been in deep enough relationship within the church body to actually offend someone and need their forgiveness.

Of course, this is because we typically weren’t sharing life in those churches, we were sharing experience. We shared the experience of Bible study, of worship, of prayer, of evangelism, of missions and during that time some life would get shared, but never fully. There was always a wall of exposure that would not be crossed, a bearing of the soul that might begin, but never reach it’s potential to bring us into real, messy community. Sharing experiences simply is not the same as sharing life.

Now I find myself in an all together different situation, involved in a house church with a group of Godly men that know me well enough to read my mail pretty much any time they look at me. They know if I am pursuing God, if I am honoring my family, if I am serving my wife, or if I am just being selfish.

Ultimately within the body we have to become close enough to one another so that we can offend one another and forgive one another. When this happens our level of community takes another step toward being a complete and unified body of believers.

If we aren’t arguing occasionally, then we are probably missing something….

Slightly more than a year ago we moved down to Decatur so that we could get to know the city for a few months before launching our church service. We moved down here based on the support of West Ridge Church, several other churches, and the promise of support from an individual offering to give us $800 a month for rent, a promise that was later raised to $1000 a month. All of the support came in the first month, then in the second month, the “benevolent” individual didn’t pay. We were to only get one more check from her, which left me trying to start a church, and pay rent for the house that we had moved into based on her promise of support. Obviously this was a huge concern and I started working a lot more hours trying to pick up work doing web design so that we could survive financially.

We held our first community outreach in event in August of ’08 followed one month later by our public launch. The services were going ok, but early on our team started to fade for various reasons. As the team faded our attendance did as well, and about six weeks into it we were spending 6 hours a Sunday to set up and tear down for a service that only volunteers and a few guests invited from outside Decatur would attend. At that point our money was also running out because of the aforementioned financial problem. So, because of this, I felt the need to pull the plug on the service and regroup.

The regrouping came in the form of re-visioning, and God brought us to the vision that I am personally very excited about, but that our core team didn’t ultimately take to. The vision is to create a church of House Churches. One large body that is composed of genuine, fully functioning House Churches that will meet occasionally as a large body to stay on the same page, to be pushed to move forward and to be able to do some of the larger services that a large church can do for it’s community.

During this time I started struggling with some depression and our financial situation got continually worse (along with the economy I guess). I took a job working as a long term substitute teacher, while still working on the church and working on websites, a combination that almost killed me and definitely made me miserable to live with. This was the darkest time in my life.

Fortunately during this time God saw fit to put us in touch with a House Church in Lawrenceville where we have been attending the last few months. Their fellowship has helped us to walk out of a lot of the darkness that we have been dealing with as well as helping us to understand the dynamics of House Church which would have been otherwise foreign to us.

During our time with the House Church we have let them know our intense financial need and two months ago one of the church members offered to let us come and live in their basement for a time to get back on our feet financially. At the time I dismissed the idea because I knew that God had called us to Decatur and I had no intention of leaving. However, over the last two months of praying and thinking about our situation I have not been able to get this offer off my mind.

Finally, three weeks ago, after another week of working at least 60 hours I broke down and told my wife that in the current situation I could only provide one of two things; either for my family’s physical needs in terms of making us the money we need, or our spiritual and emotional needs, but there was no way for me to do both. This led to a lot more prayer and discussion finally culminating in our decision to take up that family on their offer and move to Lawrenceville.

We have done this because it will alleviate our financial situation by reducing our expenses significantly per month. This will allow me to pay off all of our debt in a little more than one year while allowing me to finally work a normal (45 hour) work week. This move will help us spiritually because we will be in deep community with the people in our church fellowship and will be challenged continually to grow in Christ. And, this will help my marriage because we will finally have a little extra money so that I can date my wife again, something that I have not been able to do in about 3 years.

During the next year, I will be working a few days a week in the City of Decatur School system as a Substitute teacher, and I hope that this will put me in the a position so that next year I will be able to work as a full time teacher, if that is where God is leading. I will also be working a few days a week at my web design business and continuing to grow that. We still intend to stay very connected to the City of Decatur and to the people that we have come to know and love there. But, for the moment, I feel very strongly that for God to bless anything that we will do from this point forward the first step in that process is to become heathy so that we can move forward from a place of strength, not a place of frustration and defeat.

I can tell you, this last six months has been the toughest of my life, and I am thankful to have survived it. I can also tell you that even through the despair of great failure that I am extremely excited about the vision that God has given us to accomplish and I have no doubt that He can still do a great work even through a broken vessel like me. I am thankful for the lessons that I have learned in this process, for the pride that has been stripped from me, and for my family and friends that have stood by me.

I truly believe that God intentionally led us through this dark time to bring us to the vision and purpose that we have today, and for that I am incredibly thankful. My path has been paved with more mistakes than I care to admit, but at the same time I recognize that without them, I wouldn’t be where I am, and I am happier now, with this vision, than ever before.

So this begins a new chapter in the life of the Walker family, one of healing, growing, and deep community. My hope is that this will also drive me to more writing, as I have missed it this past year. I hope to write about communal living and some of the dynamics of that we are sure to experience. I hope that you (the reader) will stay tuned into this blog to read about spiritual life in the context of deep community, it should be interesting.

Thank you.

Environmental:

I realize that you might not buy into this whole “global warming” thing, but, true or not, there can be little doubt that our massive consumption of oil will have some sort of negative effect on the environment. From the smog that effects people’s health to oil spills to carbon emissions, I just can’t help but think that there is some negative environmental impact. So, if gas prices rise, consumption drops (as it already has), and the environment is better off.

Community:

Because we live in such a commuter culture we experience less and less community. When we go out to eat we get in a car and drive 5 miles to a restaurant we like. When we go to work we hop on in and commute for 20 to 50 minutes. When we go to church we even tend to commute between 5 and 20 miles (estimate) instead of going to the church down the street. So, everything that we do is entirely decentralized meaning that we pretty much never see, or connect with the people living 3 or 4 doors down from us.

If gas prices continue to rise, my hope is that people will start to center their lives closer to home rather than 5 to 20 miles away. I would like to see people walking places, to eat, to shop, to go to church, etc. My hope is that people might actually decide to stay home for a change and spend time on their street meeting neighbors and connecting with other people.

Family:

Families seem to be spending less and less time together. Again, its that individualist culture we have created, and I think in many cases it gets to extreme that even people within a family tend to be very individualistic. So, I have to wonder, what would happen if families couldn’t afford to drive as much? My hope is that families would begin to stay home, and that by doing that they would start to spend more quality time together and build deeper relationships.

Spiritually:

This goes hand in hand with community. Our spiritual walk is a walk best taken together. As the experience of community improves and as people begin to really rely on one another, then our spiritual walks intertwine as well and we grow together. Its life the old African proverb, “if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together.” Our spiritual walk is not about speed, but longevity.

Please Note:

I realize the strain that gas prices are putting on families, in fact, my family is strained as well, but I’m trying to share the bright side here. In many ways, this could be good for all of us.

Any thoughts?

Also,  check  out this post by my buddy Britt. He’s a smart dude.

We have walked to the park several times and every time we go the place is packed with young families that we can connect with. Today, after dinner, we decided we wanted some ice cream, so we popped the kids in the stoller and walked downtown to Jake’s Ice Cream for some home made ice cream goodness. The walk took about 15 minutes at an easy pace.

Now more than ever I am realizing how important it is to live among the people that we want to connect with. We have to get out of our Christian bubbles, outside of our Christian circle of friends, and away from our comfortable routines and comfort zones.

We must really live among the people, not just go into culture like gospel commandos on some search and rescue mission.

I have to say, this is an honor. I’m not going to tell you the ideas, or the people that stole them, but I will tell you that I am proud to have had a decent idea that was worth replicating. I think that is what being Kingdom minded is really about, sharing ideas, learning from one another’s experiences, and sharing new an innovative ways to connect with our community.

Here’s to less reading and more relationships!

Oakhurst Cooperative Preschool’s mission seeks to fulfill the supporting roles once fulfilled by grandparents, aunts, and siblings by providing a community where families not only come together to educate their children, but also to build long-term bonds among families in our community. The preschool is the center of this larger family support network, our dedication to our mission and values draws families to the greater co-op community. Our goal is to create a dynamic learning environment that synthesizes the best practices in early childhood education with the talents of a creative professional staff and focuses on integrating family and community into that environment.

Wow. They want to be family to one another, and to intentionally move out from that intimate community into the larger community to serve. I don’ t know about you, but that sounds shockingly similar to the way that the Acts 2 church was, and dissimilar to the way most “modern” churches think and operate.

Jessica talked to one lady that was a part of the school last year, the lady said that when she had a baby the community came together to cook her meals and that she didn’t have to cook anything for an entire month. ONE MONTH! When Jess and I had our last kid our church cooked us one meal!

Followers of Jesus take note! We must seek to “fulfill the supporting roles once fulfilled by grandparents, aunts, and siblings” and we are failing too often. This is the reason that we often find our community too shallow and why outsiders see the church as a selfish, people counting machine. Something in our thinking must change.

Sometimes I can level with that, but most of the time I stay far too clean. Serving is hard because it is done in the trenches of the lives of people. Our lives are messy, so when we start to really connect with one another we should expect that to be messy as well.

I encourage you to get messy today. Its not glamorous, but it is beautiful.

As the 1960s ended, sociologists Daniel Bell and Virginia Held reported that “there is more participation than ever before in America”

But as quickly as 1990 we began to see civic organizations completely die out and close the doors. Even though civic participation was at an all time high in the 60′s it seems to have bottomed out in the 90′s.

So, what does this mean? Well, it means that those reaching adulthood in the 80′s would have had only a small opportunity to participate in civic organizations and in culture as a part of a larger community. Those reaching adulthood in the 90′s had virtually no opportunity to participate in civic organizations, because these organizations were dying at the time and would not have even shown up on the social radar of most young adults. And, those people reaching adulthood later than 2000 would have virtually no knowledge that such organizations exist and little reason to think about life as anything but an individual journey.

So the shift in thinking as gone from community minded to individual minded because most adults younger than forty have thrived in a culture of declining togetherness.

This has been my personal experience as well. I can remember my grandmother talking about her weekly Bridge game (it’s cards people) when I was a kid and wondering why she would want to get together and play cards with other people. For some reason the idea of spending that much time with other people for only recreational purposes seemed odd. Now I realize that my thinking was odd.

As I am reading this book and realizing how frighteningly individualistic our culture has become I am more convicted than ever that believers must redeem a culture of community within the body of Christ and secular culture. We must learn to live life together. We must learn to build up and rely on one another. I am convinced that life is better together.

Any thoughts?

After thinking about why such an unusual event evoked such an average response I have come to only one conclusion; we weren’t saying good bye. Leaving didn’t feel monumental because I left knowing that we would be back to visit. It didn’t feel sad because I knew that I would see all of our friends again.

I am realizing more and more how interconnected we are through Jesus. In reality we aren’t just a church family, we are more than that. We are a body, and as a body we can’t be separated easily. My life has been touched by the people at FBC Austell and will continue to be, just as my life will continue to impact and minister to them. And so, even though we will see each other less, we are still connected as brothers and sisters through the Heavenly Father.

I would say that my only regret is not embracing how interconnected we really were while I was still on staff. It seems that only in leaving do I realize the impact of both my life on others and their lives on me. I only hope that in the future that my eyes will be open to see how closely my life is interwoven with others and be more intentional in developing those relationships.