The Importance of Developing Relational Webs
Spiders give me the creeps. Yet, I also admire them. (See my childhood story HERE.) We’ve all walked out on a dewy morning and witnessed what we did not see the evening previous; an intricately patterned geometric design secreted from the butt of an arachnid. Fascinating.
In small town ministry I have been witness to the importance of a different kind of beautiful and fascinating web. Rather than a web to trap and devour, it is a web that brings life. It is pieced together one person at a time over many intentional and unintentional encounters, multiple conversations, and life together in laughter and mourning. It involves biscuits, and BBQ, and post offices, and laundromats, hunting stories, and cornbread and veggie plates. The web grows and spreads across socioeconomic, political, and ethnic boundaries.
When Holly and I moved to the area we had one contact, sent via email, through someone we had never met. Where and how do we start building relationships? Let’s start there. We met Debbie. Debbie introduced us to Bryon. Bryon introduced me to Will in Mineral Bluff and Betsy in Ellijay. Will, a longterm local, has become a good friend who has introduced me to countless others in a community that is suspicious of outsiders. Just this week I met his brother-in-laws brother who works at a gas station where I host a prayer time where I also ran into Jeff, the new owner of the laundromat where I have gotten to know Tammy, Jatha, Ashleigh, and Howard. You following? Oh . . . and Betsy, like Lydia in Philippi, became the epicenter for a church that now exists in Ellijay. Through her we met Craig and Hannah, Donnie and Caroline, Greg and Mary Jo, Brandon and Daisy, Art and Angela and Liam . . . . shall I continue?
I am convinced that being consistently present over the longhaul and engaging people with questions of curiosity strings together relationships that make up a wider, stronger, more glorious web and can lead to vital ministry in any culture. This is not unique to small towns. Take your street or neighborhood or burrow or hamlet or village and you will find that, with just a smidgeon of relational moxy (stepping out in faith), the Lord can use you as a catalyst for creating your own relational web for His glory and the good of those with whom you grow into deeper community.