Returning home one evening last week I heard a familiar tone and reached for my phone which had begun to sing short bursts of it's favorite tune to me. I looked at the screen excitedly, realising I had received my first @ mention on Twitter.
I had spent the earlier part of evening in the company of a group of friends from the church I attend. It had been the final meeting we were due to have as part of the Christianity Explored program that we had recently decided to roll out as part of the churches Outreach work. The initial series of meetings had been held for members of the church only, in an attempt to learn more about the course and how to facilitate it effectively for Outreach later in the Autumn. The course went well, we ran it over six sessions, a shortened version of the full ten sessions outlined, but we learnt a lot from each other, making good friends along the way. We were able to share many of our own experiences about what it meant to be Christian and learnt a lot by just allowing ourselves the opportunity to listen to others about their experience and their faith.
This last session had for me been particularly poignant. One of our group had been generously relating how she could only remember having had a relationship with Jesus, and that her faith had been so experiential as to be hardly a faith at all. I had felt moved to recount a story of my own.
One day I happened to give a new friend and one of his relatives, a lift to an airport some miles away. They were due to travel home for some family business and as usual we were discussing matters of faith. My new friends were Messianic Jews, wonderful people from a culture I had always felt intrinsically drawn to because of my own faith. Investing, and spending time with each other, we were able to learn a lot from each other. Our conversations would frequently gravitate, or sublimate towards the Holy Spirit, but on this occasion, as we were nearing the end of our journey, the conversation had turned to Jesus Himself. Just before we arrived at our destination, a few words were exchanged in the back of the car, and then I heard my friend say,
“Do you feel Him?”
“Pardon” I said
“Do you feel Him?”
“Jesus?” I asked
“Yes”, he said.
Time, for a moment stood still, but my own internal reactions seemed to last forever. Of course I knew the answer before he had finished asking me the question, and I also knew that I had never been asked the question before.
“Yes!” I said, “Yes I do!”
Tears welled up in my eyes. I wondered why no Christian had asked me that before. Had I just presumed that everyone experienced Jesus as I did, whilst knowing full well that this wasn’t in fact the case. It was an epiphanal moment.
“Yes….yes.” I heard from the back of the car.
As I shared my own experience with my group, I was grateful to hear murmurs of understanding about those moments, that day in the car.
Back at home, I picked up the phone and clicked through the screens to see what my new Twitter friend had to say. She had sent me a link to a website along with a short message saying ‘..very interesting if you’re into religion...” I smiled at the kindness of someone being thoughtful enough to try to help me in my faith. I clicked through to a YouTube video link and watched a debate involving Sam White talking to an audience during a live televised debate about the veracity of Christianity, at least that was what Sam was talking about. It transpired then, that my new twitter friend, had in fact been trying to save me. Sam’s conversation was interesting enough, though not very well thought through, but he was enigmatic and not unlikeable. The problem was, my new Twitter friend had send the link through to the wrong person. It’s not that she had, ...but she had. There was so much that occurred to me in those few moments after I finished watching the video clip. Here was my new twitter friend trying to save me, and yet I couldn’t help wondering, that were she to successfully tear me from the comfort of my own delusion, would she continue to support me. I imagined a conversation with her.
“But where do I go now, what will I do.” I would ask.
I wondered whether she would have the time to help me through the consequences of my unsettling thoughts. I wonder whether the answer may have been,
“You have to figure it out for yourself now”.
The irony struck me. As a Christian who believes in the saving of souls, could it be right that I might put doubt in the mind of a non believer, and then leave them, without supporting them along that path, to the safety that I knew existed, and in whose hands to find it. Of course not. And I wonder whether my new friend knew of some such other place of refuge and rest to assist her erstwhile saved specimens to.
I have an interest in Christian youth-work. My interest is bound up in the fact that among some of our traditional denominations in the UK, a certain age group within the church membership has declined in numbers. It seems that once a certain age is reached, an issue of relevance becomes apparent, an issue that often causes them to take the path of the secular world, away from the church, and to choose one embedded only in what they are able to see and touch.
My own experience as a teenager caused me also to leave the church, and for issues of relevance too. But I did not lose my faith. My relationship with Jesus had always been very real to me, and of course walking out of the church doors that Sunday or any other day, would not take that away. Indeed, my problem was precisely the same, that I found it difficult to relate my Sunday practice within the church to my personal relationship with Jesus. Later in life I would come back to the church, but during my own personal interregnum, I still remained a part of His body, praying, going on pilgramage and writing. So my own interest in Christian youth-work is about helping others build a personal relationship with Jesus. I have no particular feelings as to a denominational outcome, because I feel that once they know Him, He will lead them where he needs them. It can be my service to help them come to know Him experientially, because that is what I can offer, and I know that moving on, though they will falter, once they come to know Him, they will not turn from Him, for there is nothing outside of Him. This was something expressed within our group also, that once you have had a personal relationship with Jesus, where else is there to go?
My feelings toward my new twitter friend, were therefore, feelings of warmth and understanding and gratitude, but with a sadness. I replied to her tweet, saying that her kind thoughts would ensure for her the blessings of prayer. A minute later, without reference to myself, she posted a rhetorical, “why are men like adverts?”. I chuckled understandingly, after all, it is difficult not to sound trite in 140 characters. But, my twitter friend disappeared a few days later. My main sadness though was not that her efforts were misguided, but that her honest intentions to save others were not able to be supported through her own presence in following through the rebuilding process. As Christians we are lucky. We only need to hold someone’s hand for so long. Once we have made our own introductions, we only have to stay around for a short while until we are able to make one further introduction, because for the rest of their journey, there is someone else I know...
