Why Preaching Should Not be the Primary Vehicle for Your Church’s Vision – Will Mancini. This is an interesting article about building community. It highlights how simply proclaiming vision doesn’t build the kind of community that leads to collaboration. Every would-be swarmish organization needs a connecting environment, platform, framework, setting where people build relationships to each other on a personal level.
Dunbar’s Number suggests we cannot have more than 15 relationships. Although some (like Robert Scoble) have argued against this, the more I see on social media the more I think this is realistic. The point is that we can’t typically have more than 15 deep, personal, one-on-one relationships. We can have dozens, hundreds, thousands of contacts via social networks – in fact, social media is a great tool for amplifying our ability to relate more personally to larger numbers of people.
But here’s my question: if one of your “followers” asked if you were doing okay in your relationship with your spouse, or if you were avoiding a particular addiction, or if you were getting enough rest and had sufficient boundaries – would you be able to fudge the answer?
If you can fudge the answer and get away with it – it’s not a deep connection. And it’s far too easy to do that on impersonal social networks!
It’s easy to discount a sermon and say “that doesn’t apply to me.” It’s less easy to get around someone you have a close friendship with. If a church isn’t enabling those kinds of friendships to forge, you’re never going to have Davids and Jonathans.
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