An honest discussion...
In the penumbra (fancy word for twilight) of the Grebel cafeteria, well past 6:30pm, when all others had left the table, 4 Grebelites remained. Their trays long since deposited on the rack, they were deeply absorbed in an intense discussion. The subject of their discussion—the potential for us, Grebelites, to have more intentional discussions about our beliefs. These four would like to share their discussion with you and would love to hear your thoughts.
Vanessa: Raph, you were saying you’ve noticed a difference between your Christian community in France and here at Grebel? Explain it a bit more to me.
Raphael: I was struck, astonished when I came here by the value and well-being of the relationships between residents. Everyone wanted to help and get along with each other. But I was really interested to see how Christians were living and discussing in the community. I met wonderful people with a lot of different experiences of God but I missed a more intentional, living out faith community.
Steve: yeah, I would agree we are good at helping and caring but we are slow to engage in deeper discussions with others about our values and beliefs. How do people in your home church live out their faith intentionally?
Raphael: In France there are less Christians so you need to explain, discuss, and argue about what and why you are doing things differently whereas in Grebel more people say they are Christians so everyone assumes they share the same beliefs and do not need to understand nor challenge one another. In my home church I used to have discussions with my friends until 3 or 4am in the morning every weekend in order to have the courage to live out our beliefs during the week.
Vanessa: You were telling me before that your church community meets more regularly—like you have Bible study and youth group and family hangouts and friends--
Raphael: Church is not only a Sunday activity, it’s a gathering of people that live together and share together. We spend as much time talking about the services (often even more) as we do attending the service. One of my big surprise here was that almost no one talks about the service Sunday, or after worship Tuesday or chapel.... Back home, the organization of the church is shaped by our belief of a community based church; we don’t have a pastor but we have multiple elders, we try to have a wide range of people preach, and every member organizes worship once per year, so that the service represents as much as possible the people of the church.
Vanessa: Yeah, we have a big focus on community here but not on using community to seek God. We meet for praise night, chapel, etc., and then we disperse into non-God filled discussion. It still seems like God is compartmentalized, separate from our lives. It’s put into a location like the prayer room or chapel or — faith-talks need to transcend every aspect of our lives.
Raphael: Yeah, I keep thinking of this difference between a cultural and faithful Christian—where practices, rituals, foods make us cultural Christians. What we grew up with is not enough to call ourselves Christian. All our life must be seeking God. The purpose and reason of life in a Christian perspective is to Glorify God—It should be natural then for us to need to come out and express our beliefs to each other. We can’t stay silent, we need to express our love for God.
Steve: And this is not just for Christians—I would like to hear non-Christians tell me what they think about God, or whether they can tell I’m a Christian and what that means to them. Like, I want to know how they see Christians, and what they believe about life and love, what do they/you live for. This is not an exclusive call for Christians, we want to deepen our relationship with others. I want to understand what others believe and discuss how that affects how they live.
Vanessa: We can’t point a finger because we recognize that we don’t do this ourselves and this is what we want to change first in our lives. When we sit down at supper why don’t we talk about God? What stops us from speaking about the most important part of our life? Instead we talk about school, weather, stress, and the weekend.
Jenn: Yeah, but it’s difficult to break through the superficial stuff and be comfortable with sharing more. Sharing personal things and issues are hard to bring up.
Steve: Well, I feel like if you ask serious questions people just give one word answers and then you feel awkward.
Jenn: Well, what if we shared about our lives instead of asking others to share? Like we just told them what he is doing in our lives — and that is really the hard part; to live out what we have been discussing here, when we are so used to being complacent and giving just the one word answers, to come out and be directly honest about ourselves, beliefs, struggles, questions, doubts. It's so hard and yet as Christians we are called to bear each other’s burdens.
Vanessa: Yeah, we need to be willing to share with other people but also willing to have others share with us. Share about what we believe, what God is doing, things that we are frustrated about, questions we have, doubts, concerns in our church...like we need more (searches for word)...
Steve: Transparency? Hang on I need to pee… But see I don’t have time to always focus on God –cuz I have an exam tomorrow that I could be studying for right now—yet this is so much more important but I...
Raphael: Yeah, but our student life—this is the perfect time cuz its our present reality. This is when we need to learn to make God a priority. If we don’t learn now we are not going to have any more time later, we are going to be busy later too. We need to learn how to prioritize today. Student life is the moment in your life when you decide what is important in your life, consciously or unconsciously, your lifestyle is driven by the choices you make today. Later in your life change is going to be more difficult because of responsibility towards your job, family, friends.
Vanessa: We should not be afraid to live out our faith wherever we find ourselves.
Raphael: Do you have any idea on how we could be consistent between our discussion and practice and try at our level to improve things?
Vanessa: Raph, you were saying you’ve noticed a difference between your Christian community in France and here at Grebel? Explain it a bit more to me.
Raphael: I was struck, astonished when I came here by the value and well-being of the relationships between residents. Everyone wanted to help and get along with each other. But I was really interested to see how Christians were living and discussing in the community. I met wonderful people with a lot of different experiences of God but I missed a more intentional, living out faith community.
Steve: yeah, I would agree we are good at helping and caring but we are slow to engage in deeper discussions with others about our values and beliefs. How do people in your home church live out their faith intentionally?
Raphael: In France there are less Christians so you need to explain, discuss, and argue about what and why you are doing things differently whereas in Grebel more people say they are Christians so everyone assumes they share the same beliefs and do not need to understand nor challenge one another. In my home church I used to have discussions with my friends until 3 or 4am in the morning every weekend in order to have the courage to live out our beliefs during the week.
Vanessa: You were telling me before that your church community meets more regularly—like you have Bible study and youth group and family hangouts and friends--
Raphael: Church is not only a Sunday activity, it’s a gathering of people that live together and share together. We spend as much time talking about the services (often even more) as we do attending the service. One of my big surprise here was that almost no one talks about the service Sunday, or after worship Tuesday or chapel.... Back home, the organization of the church is shaped by our belief of a community based church; we don’t have a pastor but we have multiple elders, we try to have a wide range of people preach, and every member organizes worship once per year, so that the service represents as much as possible the people of the church.
Vanessa: Yeah, we have a big focus on community here but not on using community to seek God. We meet for praise night, chapel, etc., and then we disperse into non-God filled discussion. It still seems like God is compartmentalized, separate from our lives. It’s put into a location like the prayer room or chapel or — faith-talks need to transcend every aspect of our lives.
Raphael: Yeah, I keep thinking of this difference between a cultural and faithful Christian—where practices, rituals, foods make us cultural Christians. What we grew up with is not enough to call ourselves Christian. All our life must be seeking God. The purpose and reason of life in a Christian perspective is to Glorify God—It should be natural then for us to need to come out and express our beliefs to each other. We can’t stay silent, we need to express our love for God.
Steve: And this is not just for Christians—I would like to hear non-Christians tell me what they think about God, or whether they can tell I’m a Christian and what that means to them. Like, I want to know how they see Christians, and what they believe about life and love, what do they/you live for. This is not an exclusive call for Christians, we want to deepen our relationship with others. I want to understand what others believe and discuss how that affects how they live.
Vanessa: We can’t point a finger because we recognize that we don’t do this ourselves and this is what we want to change first in our lives. When we sit down at supper why don’t we talk about God? What stops us from speaking about the most important part of our life? Instead we talk about school, weather, stress, and the weekend.
Jenn: Yeah, but it’s difficult to break through the superficial stuff and be comfortable with sharing more. Sharing personal things and issues are hard to bring up.
Steve: Well, I feel like if you ask serious questions people just give one word answers and then you feel awkward.
Jenn: Well, what if we shared about our lives instead of asking others to share? Like we just told them what he is doing in our lives — and that is really the hard part; to live out what we have been discussing here, when we are so used to being complacent and giving just the one word answers, to come out and be directly honest about ourselves, beliefs, struggles, questions, doubts. It's so hard and yet as Christians we are called to bear each other’s burdens.
Vanessa: Yeah, we need to be willing to share with other people but also willing to have others share with us. Share about what we believe, what God is doing, things that we are frustrated about, questions we have, doubts, concerns in our church...like we need more (searches for word)...
Steve: Transparency? Hang on I need to pee… But see I don’t have time to always focus on God –cuz I have an exam tomorrow that I could be studying for right now—yet this is so much more important but I...
Raphael: Yeah, but our student life—this is the perfect time cuz its our present reality. This is when we need to learn to make God a priority. If we don’t learn now we are not going to have any more time later, we are going to be busy later too. We need to learn how to prioritize today. Student life is the moment in your life when you decide what is important in your life, consciously or unconsciously, your lifestyle is driven by the choices you make today. Later in your life change is going to be more difficult because of responsibility towards your job, family, friends.
Vanessa: We should not be afraid to live out our faith wherever we find ourselves.
Raphael: Do you have any idea on how we could be consistent between our discussion and practice and try at our level to improve things?