The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community [Hardcover]

How can people learn to be social creatures again? Our society has lost its ability to connect socially, and many look to the church to provide the answer. When people do look, they are often disappointed.

Frazee shows how modern behavior patterns and mindsets sabotage the possibility of building deep relationships. His book is divided into three sections. The first, "Connecting to A Common Purpose" explores the problem of individualism and how discovering and agreeing upon Biblical purpose can (theroretically) address it. He offers practical suggestions, like limiting kids to only one sport, etc., so that families have time to get together with other families. The second section, "Connecting to A Common Place" talks about the need for stability: staying put in a church, in a job, and in a neighborhood. The third section, "Connecting to Common Possessions" is a very moderate approach toward helping and sharing with one another. Do not be afraid of this section: it is balanced and reasonable.

There are many quotables in this book. Here is my favorite from page 142, "Most pastors have come to realize that they can plan for new members to be a part of the church for only two to five years before these members move again. So prevalent is this mobility phenomenon that most people assume a new relationship isn't going to last long before one or the other of them (or both) moves away--so why bother getting started in the first place, the thinking goes."

Although I shouted a few "Amens" while reading this work, I disagree with Frazee's solution. The problem with this volume-- and others like it-- is that people who follow such approaches do not get comfortable with their humanity and that of others. Or, to put it another way, engineering relationships does not work. Even Frazee's program, if followed by people with this common "connecting deficit" defect, will still be contrived.

People who are social and value relationships will tend to stay put and build life-long friendships. The others can rarely be convinced. There is something dysfunctional about a person who cannot connect: the problem is not usually lack of structure. Though perhaps the majority of modern Americans do not connect well, the first step is to face the reality that they have the defect.

Tense people who long to connect often defeat connecting by their tense desire to do so. Connecting people are at ease with and enjoy people. And until a person is at ease with humanity and imperfection, he cannot be a connector. For example, one of Frazee's suggested social activity is watching videos together. People who connect (not because they are part of some contrived program) enjoy people so much, they'd probably rather play cards.

Additionally, better than connecting is becoming a connector. Since churches generally accept anybody, people with poor social skills get away with murder in a church context. We reward them.
If you really want to understand connecting, you are better off studying secular groups where people connect because they have relational depth, not because there is an ethic to include anybody and everybody.

Books like, "Bowling Along" (Putnam) are most illuminating here. Do you subscribe to and read your daily paper? Do you make the effort to meet a new neighbor? Do you watch the news and vote? Do you belong to clubs or civic organizations? Do you watch only a moderate amount of TV? Do you have people over for a visit at least once a month? Is your church attendance faithful, including dinners and special events? Do you serve in a ministry? Odds are those who said "yes" to most of the above are the real connectors.

Frazee is right in this regard: the church should provide opportunities for connection. But connectors will thrive even with few such opportunities, and most non-connectors will not genuinely connect no matter what the structure. Non-connectors, instead, need to realize that they have a defect and learn by imitating connectors how to overcome it. Opportunities to connect will train future generations and help those who are truly teachable and aware of their connecting deficit. And for these teachable people, Frazee's approach will work--if coupled with a desire to connect socially not only in church, but to the community as well.

Frazee's proposed solution is very tangible. In fact, it is being lived out in Pantego Bible Church in Arlington, Texas, where Frazee is the senior pastor.

His antidote to individualism is SHARED PURPOSE. His antidote to isolation is SHARED PLACE. His antidote to consumerism is SHARED POSSESSIONS.

Of course, his primary inspiration for this model is the New Testament church.

Most pastors won't have too much trouble with the idea that it is good for a church to have a SHARED PURPOSE. Not that that's easy to pull off, but there has been so much written about clarity of mission and vision that this is widely accepted, even if seldom put into practice.

But after that it gets a lot more costly to follow Frazee where he wants to lead us. He acknowledges that all three of these principles are very countercultural, and therefore they will not be easy to implement. But when the core values of a culture destroy community, the only way to nurture healthy community in that culture is to be countercultural.

By SHARED PLACE he means forming Home Groups within the church that consist of a few families who all live in the same neighorhood--defined as within easy walking distance. This is so that contact between the families can be frequent and spontaneous. It also means calling families to intentionally put down roots, to not pull up and move just because relocating can bring in another $5,000 to $10,000 in income. Building community will require making community a top priority in our lives. It also means simplifying life to have more time for relationships. Frazee suggests making the changes necessary to live on a single income (or one full-time income and a second part-time income generated from home). Countercultural stuff! But, Frazee believes, the price of recovering healthy community as a way of life.

By SHARED POSSESSIONS Frazee does not mean doing away with private ownership and pooling all money and property in a common treasury. Rather, he means internalizing and living by the New Testament attitude: "No one claimed anything he possessed was his own, but they shared everything they had." They still had possessions, but they no longer saw themselves as owning them, but rather as stewards (managers) of them. Which meant that when one member of the community had a need, and other members had the means to meet the need, they met it. As a result, there was no unmet financial need in the Jerusalem church. Frazee believes that is a mark of healthy community and that the church can relearn how to do that today.

Frazee's proposal is so countercultural that most churches won't consider it. We say we want community, but not many of us want to pay the price. We've become addicted to our two incomes, our excessive independence, and our self-sufficency. We aren't about to trade all that in on a simplified life and interedependence.

But a significant minority will welcome Frazee's example. I hope that some of those who do live within walking distance of my house.