I was surprised that most web users are actually referred to as lurkers.
The time they spend on the internet is simply in reading and looking at blogs.
I’m now wondering if lurking might also be a component of today’s
church. We have a lot of folks who are perfectly satisfied with listening and
learning, and they have no desire or need to get plugged into church
programming. It may be that some of the church’s organized efforts to
force-feed fellowship and generate discussion are misguided.
So the next time a Sunday School teacher tries to pull a comment out of
you, you can just tell them you’re lurking.
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Char knows I see issues next door to serious with the church we attend. We talk about those occasionally, and she will offer that maybe we might consider going elsewhere because of how I think. But the two matters important to me are that she is deeply in good fellowship at that church, and no other church around is without its own issues next door to serious. So I want her where she gets the major fulfillment Christ meant church to be: fellowship.
-----We don’t participate in programs. They are near meaningless. What meaning they have is directional towards some process that if analyzed would be recognized as merely being a component of fellowship. So we involve ourselves with a program in as much as that is how a church presents what is going on, and then we step through it to participate in the folks we find around it. I think that’s what most people do, and what churches mostly desire from programs.
-----Fellowship is at least one step beyond lurking. The possibility that fellowship requires a second step beyond recognizes the possibility that offering a comment in Sunday School, carrying on a conversation, or even participating in a program does not necessarily make participation in one another. It certainly does make activity with one another. But participation goes beyond simple activity.
-----Participation moves along the lines of empathy - of “…vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…” as Merriam-Webster so well defines it. Jesus exposed the true pinnacle of His empathy when saying we give Him drink when we give the least of His brethren drink. When empathetic sensitivity detects a situation of another’s life needing some benefit you can provide, your participation in providing that amount of benefit must ride the line of detection for Christ to detect truth in you.
-----So empathy is like the bones of fellowship. Participation hangs upon it. My Dad has titanium hips, and if Social Security was any more empathetic he would have gold knees. But as reality would have it, his knees are titanium, too, made golden only by his prayerful empathy. We live in an imperfect world where bones wear out and get replaced. The church is no less vulnerable to the wear and tear of carelessly used bones. When the living empathy has worn away from the joint ends of its bone, the church replaces it with the titanium of programs. And although the muscles of fellowship flex well around those all the same in serving many needs of the saints, the cold titanium of a joint program only delivers empathy by proxy.
-----Maybe I extend your meaning too far, but I see the lurker also in the mere program participant. He has no bone of empathy. He is not of sensitivity to the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of those within his proximity. If he is a church leader, he will serve the church X because X is the suggested program. If he is the follower, he will do X because X is the leader’s program. Neither will cast a thought towards another, for they touch others only through titanium.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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