Memorial Baptist Church

This was taken from my e-newsletter article this week.

The longer I live the more value I place on relationships. Our God is a relational God. We've been created for a purposeful relationship with Him. We've also been created for relationships with one another. What about Adam? God saw that it wasn't good for Adam to be alone and created Eve as a helpmate. Not only did Adam and Eve work together, they conversed together. God knows and encourages relational maturity. 

In times past, a culture expectation existed which valued relational development. As an amateur societal observer, I believe this value is shifting from community to isolationism.  We're witness to a devaluation of community and a lessening priority on personal relationships. I think this is due in part to the increase of personal work loads, schedules, transient populations, and technology.  Among these aggregate of reasons, you discover a cumulative effect. No single reason, just the combination of several factors. 

Watch the shift in population even in Baytown. We're observing people moving in and out of our community. My neighborhood (Devinwood) is comprised predominately of new residents - people without a history in Baytown. We were the fourth house to be occupied in our neighborhood. The past couple of years, we have observed people coming and going. Within a stones throw of our house, three families which moved in after we did have already picked up stakes and moved on to other communities. The tenure of residency seems to be shortening.

Technology has created a shift from the personal to the impersonal. Emails, online communities such as Facebook and Myspace, and online business environments - though helpful and necessary in today's economy - carry a burden of depersonalizing our relationships. There's something about eye contact, gestures, and mannerisms that complete the task of communication. These are missed in our many impersonal communications venues. There's something to be said about sitting in a room with another person or other people and engaging in conversation.  There's something to be said for personal involvement in the lives of people around us.  As our communities become more transient and our preferred modes of communication increasingly impersonal, I believe people will seek out opportunities to develop significant and meaningful relationships. 

Here's an opportunity for the church.  It's a great place to intentionally develop meaningful relationships. Over the next months, we'll be approaching ways in which we can become intentional about developing friendships with others. People are looking for something personal, they're looking to be noticed, cared for, encouraged, challenged, and loved. We experience all these and more in relationships.