Discovering the Power of Uncommon Friendships in our faith journeys

My launch into adulthood was a little backwards.

It started typically enough. Like many of my college-aged peers, I have gone through my late teens and early twenties getting my worldview rocked, again and again.

While talking to my mother on the phone, I mentioned that usually, kids from Christian households go to college or out to work, and learn how to be friends with people who aren’t Christian. They learn that their parents aren’t the final authority, and neither is their home-town pastor. They’re exposed to different theologies, stretched on their beliefs, and have to figure out how to be in community with religiously diverse people.

“However,” I said to my mom, half-yelling over the car phone, “I think I went through it backwards. We moved around so much, changing churches and houses every year or so. Then you and dad started church planting with folks who didn’t believe in God, were in recovery from drug addiction, and had been in and out of jail.

My “youth group” had former bank robbers, unhoused mothers, and recovering alcoholics.

So rather than stepping out of a Christian circle and into the religiously diverse world, I’m going into the circle.

I’m learning that having Christian friends my age is pretty awesome. I’m finding stability in the church I’m going to here in San Diego, and there’s something really comforting in going to church with people who look like me, talk like me, and worship like me. When I walk into church, I know what the sermon is going to sound like, and I wear soft sweaters and talk to other young people about school, marriage, and the recent baseball game. There are still differences in age, race, sex, and politics, but for the most part, I can relate to the people I stand next to.

As I continue steadily towards my mid-twenties, I’m learning that this way of living is very attractive, and here’s why: being in community and worshiping with people like me is comfortable. I’m growing in my faith and spiritual practices, I’m affirmed and supported, and I show up to church at ease and ready to hear the Word. We all read about poverty and death, but then go out to brunch afterward in cars with AC and know that we’re making rent next month.

Now, none of these things are necessarily bad. Like I said, I’m growing in my faith.

But because I grew up with the mission of uncommon friendship and common discipleship, I know it’s not the whole story.

It can be easy to slide into living with what’s comfortable, and there’s nothing wrong with being supported, encouraged, and bolstered by a community that you expect and go looking for. But as I continue to follow Spring Church’s series on how Jesus’ love for unexpected people transforms the way we love each other, I can’t ignore the clear Biblical stories that point toward the people who don’t look like me.

In story after story, Jesus uses unexpected people to bring others closer to Him.

Take a look at stories we’ve already visited: the woman caught up in prostitution was absolutely not welcome at the dinner table, and definitely wasn’t a part of the community. Yet Jesus praised her faith and demonstrated how no one is beyond redemption. The paralyzed man was overlooked, yet his friends lowered him through a roof, and Jesus praised their faith, all of theirs, to a crowd that had failed a member of their community. The woman at the well was cast out, forced to go to the well without the company of other women, and Jesus used her to preach to the rest of her town.

Time and time again, Jesus comes to the unexpected to bring everyone closer to Him. He demonstrates his love through the discipling of the invisible and overlooked, the religiously diverse and the powerless, the sinners and the hopeless.

Simply put, unexpected people draw us to the transformational love of Jesus.

Going to church, worshiping with people who look like me, and being in a community that reflects my own values isn’t bad, but neither is it all I need for Jesus’ plan. If I’m to participate in what the Holy Spirit is doing in my life, I need to go out and make myself open to it. And that might mean being in a “youth group” with people who’ve seen the inside of a jail cell, or known what hunger means, or lost everything.

When you open yourself up to joining what the Holy Spirit is doing, you might be drawn into uncomfortable places that stretch, challenge, and change you. It might not be an unconventional youth group, but it could be.

This week we’re diving into the story of the boy with the unclean spirit, and he’s unexpected in nearly every possible way. He can’t speak, he can’t control his body, and he’s unclean, so he wouldn’t be allowed to live in the community. Yet Jesus uses him and his father to demonstrate to the crowd the power of faith and His transformational love.

As I pray for God to show me who He is sending my way, I might step into relationship with people who are religiously diverse, apathetic, sick, lonely, zealous, poor, rich, powerful, or not (in fact, I’m already friends with a handful of people who are like this). Maybe my launch into adulthood wasn’t so backwards after all.