I was on a community prayer walk recently, and I noticed something funny. Not “ha ha” funny, but the kind of funny that really makes you think. What I noticed was a bunch of individuals walking down the street. Even though there were lots of people walking around, there were very few people who acknowledged that they were in any sort of community with other people.
As I tried to make eye contact with people so that I could give them the nod (which has replaced the need to actually say “hello” to each other), I found very few of them that would even look in my direction.
I know what you’re probably thinking… since I was on a prayer walk, it was probably my vocal prayers for the heathens and the stack of tracts in my hands that made people turn away from me. But that wasn’t the case! It was the kind prayer walk where we walked in two’s and three’s and prayed quietly under our breath. To other people also walking down the street, I would have been just some other guy walking down the street too.
I didn’t expect people to stop and start random conversations with me, but it was clear to me that there is little sense of true community in our communities today.
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Next time you can vocally say “hello” to initiate that connection yourself, thus being pro-active. They could've been thinking the same thing…”That guy didn't even say “hi” to me…”.
I think to get the intent of this, you really should read the entire post at the link to highcallingblogs.com. This is just a short exceprt from the opening of the post. But your point is well taken…
However, I will say that during these prayer walks, our intent was not to strike up conversations with people, but to be on the streets of our city and pray. While we were doing so, this was merely an observation about the individualism that exists in our culture today. And that is not something that is unique to this prayer walk.
If you read the full article, then you'll also see that I make the observation that it seems to be the same way inside the church, and propose ideas that would be the solution to this problem (such as being intentional about talking with people…)
I think to get the intent of this, you really should read the entire post at the link to highcallingblogs.com. This is just a short exceprt from the opening of the post. But your point is well taken…
However, I will say that during these prayer walks, our intent was not to strike up conversations with people, but to be on the streets of our city and pray. While we were doing so, this was merely an observation about the individualism that exists in our culture today. And that is not something that is unique to this prayer walk.
If you read the full article, then you'll also see that I make the observation that it seems to be the same way inside the church, and propose ideas that would be the solution to this problem (such as being intentional about talking with people…)