What Season is it? Growing and Gathering!

by Dr. Judy Stack

There is an old joke that it is especially dangerous to leave your car unlocked or your windows down this time of year in Minnesota — because if you do, somebody is likely to leave a bag of zucchini and tomatoes in it!

It is indeed a time of abundance in our gardens—a time when we are both growing and gathering the fruits of the season. And it feels like that is what happening right now at St John’s. Sunday the 15th we had a joyous Gathering Sunday, and the recent article by Sarah Dull prepared us for it by reminding us of the blessing of unity in our parish. But Gathering Sunday is just the beginning—the relationships we celebrated are still “on the vine,” so to speak. We are just beginning to see the early fruits of the connectedness and deepened relationships that have been growing for a while. A potential bumper crop is on the horizon.

People are hungry for more opportunities to build relationships–and becoming inspired!

There is something new happening at St John’s. Almost every Sunday (and some weekdays): someone from the parish says to me, “You know what I’d really love to see….” and then they share a fascinating idea for a way they would like to connect with others. A cycling group. A “makers’ space” Saturday for artists and crafters in the gym. A monthly social dance. A shared holiday meal for folks who don’t have family nearby. A group for sailing on area lakes. Going to various art shows and galleries and talking about the art. People are hungry for connection and the Spirit is inspiring people with ideas big and small for how we can grow in our connectedness and deepen our friendships.

And it’s not just St John’s. Every time I talk with our Ramsey Hill neighbors, I hear the same thing: they are eager to build new relationships, widen their circles, and create a true sense of community. And they are excited about St John’s as a neighbor and for the possibilities of partnership in building connections that are broader and more diverse, reflecting the actual character of the neighborhood.

But of course, it goes beyond our neighborhood. In a conversation with Fr. Craig before he went on sabbatical, he spoke of the results of some of his research with young people both within and outside the church. “They are desperately lonely and isolated,” he said. “They want to find ways to gather and create community, but almost everything they see costs money and they can’t afford it. They want to be together with others but they feel there aren’t options for them. It’s heartbreaking.”

Young people aren’t the only ones. I hear regularly from our older parishioners about their need for more connection and community. The loss of friends and family through death and physical distance feels more and more acute for them. And the fellowship of Sunday mornings is not enough.

So the groundswell of folks who have ideas for new ways to connect feels like a move of the Spirit, God responding to the cries of God’s people.

We already knew the need was there–that’s why this summer we had our Garden Conversations on deepening authentic relationships. (For the book list, see my previous article here.) But it is exciting to see already the work God is doing even among people who weren’t able to join us. And I want to report, briefly, on a few of the things I took away from those conversations–things that I thought were helpful and hopeful.

Ingredients in the secret sauce of connecting and deepening relationships

It can seem like creating situations where people really connect and begin to move deeper with one another is a mysterious process, one that a few relationship experts know the formula for. But through our readings over the summer in the Garden Conversations, we saw that it is really simpler than we assume. Here are a few of the key ingredients.

“What lights you up?” – The ingredient of Passion

“What is something you love to talk about when you find someone willing to listen?” This is one of the questions we often ask new members when we do interviews for our profile articles. It is a great way to get at what someone is deeply passionate about. What about you? What would you talk about? What are you passionate about? Finding people who share that passion creates an immediate connection and basis for building on that shared experience. Every piece of passion we carry is a little spark of God’s passion for the world–its joy and beauty and wonder. Bringing that forward and sharing it with others brings a little piece of God’s life and love out, and gathers us to it. 

The takeaway: What you care about, someone else cares about. You can find your people.

You got to move it, move it!” – The ingredient of Body and Play 

One of the earliest ways each of us created relationships was through physical play–whether it was playing pat-a-cake or peek-a-boo with a caregiver or as preschoolers simply running and chasing each other or as kids riding bikes through the neighborhood. Getting our bodies involved releases chemicals that make us happy and creates bonds with those we engage with.

As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talked about in his book Together, across centuries and cultures there are four common practices that have fostered connection, all of them deeply embodied: preparing food and eating together, dancing, laughing, and singing or making music together. These are some of our most powerful and natural ways to connect with others, and yet ones we often neglect because we think “building relationships” is mostly about talking.

Sharing and telling stories of our lives can be powerful, but we need to recapture the power of healthy, safe physical interaction as a way of connecting. In the incarnation, God hallowed embodiment. God shows up in bodies and God shows up to create and deepen relationships when we engage our bodies.

The Takeaway: Building deeper relationships isn’t just about talking and “sharing.” We also build relationships when we engage our whole physical selves.

“The Thing in the Middle” – The ingredient of a Gathering Point 

Years ago I read a book about having significant, community-building conversations. I can no longer remember the name of the book, but one point has stuck with me: the importance of having a “thing in the middle.” What does that mean? It means that there are very few people who naturally love to delve right into self-revelatory, vulnerable conversations intended to deepen relationships. Most people are more comfortable having conversations and relationships develop when something else is the focus–the thing in the middle. The thing in the middle can be something good and valuable in its own right (like a service project or a book study) or it can be something that is less intrinsically valuable (like a board game) but the important thing is that the thing in the middle serves as a gathering point for folks.

This too has deep traditional roots: people gathered and shared their lives and stories as they shared tasks–things as big as a grain harvest or as small as doing the dishes–or shared amusements like poker or horseshoes. The thing in the middle lowers self-consciousness and creates space for building trust without it being forced or assumed. A clear gathering point lets relationships develop in a way that feels natural. God hallows even the most mundane things of our lives by using them as a means to create one of the most precious and sacred–true community. 

The Takeaway: Relationships can grow in lots of ways. You don’t have to be an extrovert or love to talk about your feelings.

“Just do it!” – The ingredient of Intention 

The books we read had an interesting tension around this ingredient. On the one hand, The Art of Gathering challenged those of us who organize meetings or gatherings of any sort (from dinners to high level corporate seminars) to be highly intentional–to pick one thing you want to have happen in the gathering and to arrange every aspect of the gathering toward that one thing. Clarity of intention helps sort out and prioritize things in a way that brings success. On the other hand, many of the success stories in the books we read were about people who decided to “just do it.”

“Just do it” means just start calling a friend to make a coffee date every time you think “I miss them. I wonder how they’re doing.” Its people who just started inviting people over for dinner and, in doing so, started a whole dinner community movement. One powerful story from Together told about a young woman who became lonely and isolated during her first year at a large university. After a transformative experience over the summer with a yoga group that cared for and supported her, she went back to her university with the desire to recreate that for others. She discovered literally hundreds of other students who felt as she had, and started informal but structured gatherings for small groups. By the time she graduated there were hundreds of such groups on campus. When she started, she had no clear idea what would happen, she just did it. Just doing it requires some courage and the willingness to risk. But God is always ready to use not only our strengths but our needs as a means of blessing others. We simply need to, like Peter, be willing to step out of the boat.

The Takeaway: Relationships grow when we intentionally choose to invest in them, prioritize them, and risk trying new things. What you need is probably what someone else needs too.

What’s next: Strengthening our connections and creating porous boundaries

St John’s already has a number of official spiritual life groups that are flourishing (men’s group, women’s group, spiritual discernment group, book group, OWLs, Friday Bridge) and a few that have been dormant for a while but are being reactivated (young-ish adults, knitting group, LGBTQIA+). If you are interested in any of these, please let me know and I will connect you with the contact person!

But clearly we are in a season to stretch into the new things God is doing in our midst. Do you have an idea for how you’d like to connect with others? Did the “secret sauce ingredients” click with you and get you thinking about possibilities? I would love to hear about it!

And in the next few weeks we will be rolling out a new feature on our St John’s website. We will have discussion boards for SJE members where they can float ideas and connect with others who might want to join them in groups or activities that will build deeper connections and create more community. If you want to begin checking them out, you can look here. You will need to make an account to post—let us know if you have trouble signing up. And keep your eyes open for more announcements and links in the upcoming weeks.

And as we strengthen our own connections with each other within the parish, we are looking at ways to connect more with the neighborhood. As part of the first listening phase related to the capital campaign, folks both from St John’s and from the wider community expressed hopes that St John’s could move toward being a more shared community resource. That our abundance would overflow as a gathering space not just for our members, but as a community hub that brings neighbors together and builds community on a broader scale. We hope to live deeper into the motto of “a church of the open door” not just by having more folks use our building (although that can be great) but by creating groups and activities that aren’t just for St John’s members but have “porous boundaries” with our neighborhood. 

God is in the business of building authentic, life-sustaining relationships for everyone–those who consider themselves part St John’s and those who do not. As we begin to imagine what God is up to among us in creating community, we will also be imagining how we can extend that community and connection to those around us who need it, who God can bless and strengthen when we faithfully step into what we are being called to and join with the Lord of the Harvest who is already at work in people’s hearts.

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