Relational Spaces and the Disciple Cycle

Not every kind of space is conducive to making friends. In the past I've talked about the four relational spaces and how they function online, but if anything, they are more important for real-life interaction. The four spaces are: public, social, personal and intimate. Notice how the different steps of the Disciple Cycle are grouped by the types of relational space. Meeting, connecting and making friends happens in the public and social spaces. Meeting and connecting with people can happen in the public space or the social space, but really making friends typically only happens in the social space.

Once you're already friends with a person, then you enter the personal space. This is where questions are alright. Obviously the better you know someone, the deeper the questions can go. But questions about the existence of God or the meaning of life are typically not good for the social space and are definitely not alright for the public space.

You want to match the tone of the relationship to the type of space you're in. If you meet up with friends at a concert, don't try to start a discussion about religion or spirituality. Public spaces are much more well suited to talking about the weather, sports and the new movie coming out this weekend. If you're in a social space, there is some room for deeper questions, but you probably shouldn't lead the conversation in that direction. Let your friends set the tone. If they want to hash out the church's stance on abortion, go ahead and share your thoughts.

The important thing to remember is that each space has a level of solidity to the statements made. So statements made in the public space are not open for discussion while things said in the personal or intimate spaces have a lot of opportunity for change.

• Public - Positional statements that cannot be challenged without sparking an argument.  
• Social - Rehearsed statements that don't necessarily lead to argument, but aren't up for in-depth discussion. 
• Personal - I-Think statements that are qualified as personal thoughts, but are still defended as positional statements. 
• Intimate - I-Feel statements that are qualified by emotions and can give insight into the principles that underlie positions. 

The closer to public the space is, the more calcified the statements will be. There's really no room to move with positional and rehearsed statements. You can get to know people, but they don't lend themselves to good questions. It's only once you start to get into the freedom of I-think and I-feel statements that honest questions can be a part of the friendship. 

The Disciple Cycle

The Disciple Cycle starts with us giving up the task of trying to convert people. Then, we need to learn how to be disciples ourselves. So, when we start making friends, we can invite them into the life of a disciple. It's not an artificial move, but an invitation based on a relationship and natural observation.

Once we're friends with someone it can take months or years before they are ready to have a spiritual conversation. Your job is to be transparent and available without being pushy. They need to know that you love Jesus and that you're his disciple, but you don't try to force them to think or act in any way. You love them as they are, for who they are, with no strings attached.

I'm writing all of this knowing that any of my non-Christian friends may read it. There's nothing to hide here, they should already know who I am and what I do, and (here's the important part) they should feel comfortable being themselves around me. Because I'm a disciple of Jesus, doesn't mean I can't be friends with non-Christians (Jesus was great at being friends with the people labeled sinners by the religious establishment). Guess what, not all of Jesus "sinner" friends were converted by him. Some of them had fun at the party, enjoyed the wine that he provided (he made some good wine) and went on their way. Jesus didn't run and stop them, he didn't make them feel uncomfortable, he just kept loving them and going to parties with them.

However, if a friend is interested in your spiritual journey, you should be ready to share. Here's the trickiest, touchiest and scariest part of the whole process: let them ask any question. Remember that the life of a disciple starts with questions. When you invite your friends to see your life, they get to ask questions too. But their questions may be different from the ones you're used to asking or hearing. That's OK. It's fine. There are no off-limits questions in the disciple life. God isn't afraid of us asking anything.

Here are some of the questions I've heard:

• Why does God hate Jesus and kill him? 
• Isn't the bible controlled by the Vatican? How can we trust it?
• Did Jesus have wet dreams? 
• Don't all religions point to the same goal? 
• Why would you want to go to heaven anyway? 
• Can the church give me money for my marijuana to help me get off meth?
• Isn't God kind of like an abusive husband? 

Note, all of these are real questions asked by real people who seriously wanted an answer. You cannot laugh, mock, scoff or scorn questions unless you want to damage the relationship. It's also a bad idea to try to answer the question outright. First off, you probably don't know the answer, and secondly, that's not the disciple process. You don't ask questions and then get answers. The process of searching and discovery is powerful and important. Don't try to short-circuit the process to help your friends or to prove that you're so smart. 

I would respond with: "That's a great question. Can you tell me more about what you mean by it?"

Then, just keep digging as long as you can. What you're doing is acting as a sounding board for your friend to explore their own thoughts on the subject. One of the best ways to start searching for an answer is to have a clearly stated question. If you help your friend to state their question well, then you've invited them to take the next step of the disciple journey. 

What are some of the best questions you've heard? 

How to Make Friends

If you're going to share the life of a disciple with people, you have to meet them first. The problem that I've found is I'm not very good at intentionally meeting new people. Sure I've met a lot of new people, but it has been through activities or groups that made the process easy. I was in school or at church where I was bound to meet people and then develop friendships with them, over time. But now that I'm not in school anymore I don't really have a non-church way to connect with new people.

Meeting new people takes time and intentionality. You won't accidentally meet new people if you don't work on it. It takes shared social space to meet new people. So, first, you need to find a social space that isn't threatening or closed. Then you need to find a way to share that space with other people. One of the best ways I've found to meet new people is through shared interests. It could be a Toastmasters meeting, a community choir, a woodworking club or a basketball league. Whatever your interests, you can find a way to meet people through them. But once you meet someone, that's only the beginning.

Connecting with the people that you meet narrows the number of relationships significantly. You may meet hundreds or thousands of people, but you only connect with a few of those. It might be a shared interest or a carpool or something you can't define. You'll connect with a few of the people you meet in a way that is noticeably different from the majority of the people you meet. From there you need to figure out how to make friends with them.

Friendship doesn't just happen. It may seem like it since most of our friendships weren't planned, but there is a consistent process of making friends that isn't random or mysterious. You obviously need to meet people and then connect with people, but turning the corner from connection to friendship takes time. There's no substitute for time spent together to transform an acquaintance into a connection. You need to find ways to spend time with the people with whom you develop a connection and then a friendship may sprout. Just like the way connections narrow the field of people from those you met, you will only become friends with a limited number of people with whom you develop a connection.

Remember, this process takes time. You will probably be discouraged by spending months searching for connection after you meet someone or waiting for a friendship to develop from a connection. Just keep spending time with people and genuinely loving them for who they are (no strings attached). It's not your job to convert people, your job is to love people, so do it well.

How do you develop friendships with the people you meet?

Too Many Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers

A British scientist named Robin Dunbar looked at the capacity of human beings to maintain relationships. He found that our brains can only maintain about 150 friends at a time. So from the Stone Age on, groups have self-organized around the 150 limit.

What's going on is that your brain is connecting all the pieces of relationship between yourself and the other people in the group. You hold in your head how person one will interact with person 37 and with person 90 and with 148. But if you get beyond 150 your brain can't keep up anymore. This has been proven again and again for groups of people throughout history.

What's been in question though is how social media has affected the equation. Recently a study was performed on Twitter users to examine how many relationships people could maintain. The finding was shocking in its normalcy. The limit for social media: the same as for real-life groups, 150.

What this means in practicality is that, even though you have more than 150 friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter, you can't maintain a relationship with more than 150 of them. You may have contact with hundreds, but the real connection of two-way conversation and interaction only happens between the smaller group of friends. If you look through your friend list or your follower list you'll find that it's true. You may have as many as 200 or a few a 100, but you'll fall somewhere in the 150 range.

So when you're looking at connecting with people through social media, remember that what a friend shares is important. You can only be an important voice to about 150 people in your life. Beyond that your words start to get lumped in with acquaintances, advertisements and news sources.

Really invest in the 150 that you are connected to. Choose them well and cultivate those relationships. You have the ability online to stay connected like never before -- but only with that smaller group. For the larger group, don't try to push the relationship beyond what it will bear. Treat them like acquaintances and expect to be treated the same. Let someone else be that important, friend-voice in their 150. Your brain can't handle it.