More on Shared Experiences

I received a comment on last Friday's post on shared experiences that I suspect resonates with a lot of people (see the comments from the Fri 9/21 post). The commenter expressed a great deal of frustration over attempts to provide shared experiences for his/her family, including feelings of failure and futility. I thought the comment was important enough to require a response in today's post. I'm going to try to go a little deeper into the subject of shared experiences and try to offer some help today. I feel a little like Dear Abby! But I'm grateful for the response, which is very helpful, and hopefully I can offer some help and encouragement.

Shared experiences are glue to relationships. The more you have, the stronger the relational bond. Acts 2:42-47 is essentially a list of the shared experiences of the early church. People can be members of a church or even a family, but without shared experiences they may not feel like they're a part. This is how people can participate in a Sunday School class or small group, even for a long period of time, and still not feel like they know people or are known by them. Coming to meetings does not glue people together like shared experiences do. In the family, and the group, and the neighborhood, and the church, we are after shared experiences, not meetings.

In response to the comment by anonymous last Friday, let's first be clear that shared experiences are a lot more than family vacations. It might be helpful to recall the 4 functions: play, serve, grow, belong. You could easily call these the 4 shared experiences. Vacations fall mostly in the play function, which is important but not the whole story. Serve, belong and grow functions are powerful shared experiences. Rather than planning a vacation, plan a serving opportunity or a time where group members tell their stories. Sometimes (and you can't really plan when), these things will turn into unforgettable shared experiences. Weathering adversity together is one of the most powerful shared experiences ever, and you obviously can't plan that, but you can prepare for it. Building habits of being together positions you for real community when it's needed and not just wanted. The kind of bonds that soldiers have, for instance, is born out of interdependence in life-or-death situations; you can't plan that, but you can be together at the right time.

My family enjoys traveling together, but I recognize that families are different and many families aren't road-trip types. That's okay! Don't place spiritual significance on whether or not you go on trips. The value is more important than the method. You do, however, need to figure out ways to play together as a family or group. Playing together can be difficult because it's a matter of personal preference. If your family or group can't play together because nobody can agree on what to do, there is a value issue there that is worth talking about. There has to be some give-and-take for everyone to play together; this is an important relational skill and is part of the reason play is important at all. If people in the group can't do this, you don't have a play problem, you have a relationship problem, and you might as well confront it now.

We are so programmed in our society to seek our own pleasure first, that it undermines our relationships. The strategy of marketing and pop culture is to isolate each member of the family from the others and market to them individually, because that generates more sales. It's not unusual to see every member of a family detached from the others, but attached to an individual form of electronic media: dad's on the Internet in his office, mom is watching TV in one room, little brother is on another tv in the playroom and big sister is texting on her phone. We've been conditioned to believe that leisure and recreation should be all about us. This pre-conditioning is difficult to overcome, but it's totally worth it to do battle on this front. If this is a real problem in your family or group, talk about it openly. Philippians 2:3-4 tells us to consider the interests of others and not just our own; play is a great opportunity to put that into practice. Choose an interest of one person and have the rest of the group value that person by participating in it, then do the same for another person the next time. You may be stoked when everyone is supporting you, but you'll grow more on the days when you're supporting someone else's interests. Or, choose activities that aren't necessarily anyone's specialty. Remember--especially guys--that play is more than competitive sport. Play does not have to be athletic or competitive: examples include camping, going to the park or beach, taking an evening walk or even crafts like woodwork or quilting (at least that's what I hear).

Anonymous, you also mentioned your preference for reading a book over shared experiences. Reading is a great habit and a fine pastime, but it doesn't count as a play function unless it's a book club. Be conscious of the non-verbal communication you're sending: if the other members of the group do feel that you'd rather be off reading a book than be with them, you're going to have an uphill battle on your hands. Let the transformation begin with you; we're often unaware of the impression we give others around us. If you have the courage and thick skin, ask others in your group what kind of impression you give them--it may be an enlightening conversation.

Championing the value of shared experiences can be emotionally hard and take a long time. Please understand, you are attempting to change culture, perhaps years of conditioning and habits, and that doesn't happen overnight. Jim Collins' "flywheel principle" really comes into play here. A flywheel is an extremely heavy wheel or cylinder. It takes enormous energy at first just to move it a little bit, but if one is both consistent (always pushing the flywheel the same direction) and persistent (not giving up or being discouraged by small progress), eventually the flywheel will start to spin, and once you get it going its own inertia keeps it spinning with only a little help. Most of what we're doing at the Springs is like this. Refuse to quit pushing the flywheel, believing that eventually big things will come of it. Don't expect "microwave" results. Relationships are slow-cookers!

Celebrate even small victories. Don't miss shared experiences that come when they weren't planned. Talk about the value of shared experiences, about playing and belonging and growing and serving together, even when you're not experiencing them; that way everyone will recognize them when they happen. Don't stuff your calendar so full that there's nothing left to share. And pray. If there was ever a prayer that was within the will of God, this one is it: as Jesus prayed, that we would be one as he and the Father are one.
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Readers, leave a comment and share some of your family or group shared experiences. They may range from the extraordinary to the mundane, but every one bonded you with others around you.