We had finished the game two hours earlier and were sitting at a large, round table in Luigi’s. Pizza had been ordered; in the meantime we were sipping soft drinks or beer.
The air in Luigi’s was wet and warm. Other softball players, some from our team, many from other teams, crowded the tables around us. The sweat from the game was only partially dried, adding to the locker room atmosphere; but the effect was not at all unpleasant. It was happy camaraderie, a cave-like sense of well-being, isolated from the outside world.
Loud conversation filled the room. The subject was softball. At our table, we replayed our victory in detail, playfully chiding those who had made mistakes, congratulating the night’s heroes. Other nights the talk might have been of defeat, and we would have agonized over those same mistakes and wondered “just what’s wrong with our ball club?”
In either case the talk was sincere and easily understood by everyone. We were teammates, and teammates behave that way.
I have often wondered about the easy camaraderie on the baseball and softball teams I have played on for twenty-two years. Why is conversation so easy? Why are friendships so quickly made? How can the ambiance be so accepting that even the poor guy who makes a game-costing error is quickly accepted by all once we get to Luigi’s?
It certainly isn’t because we are so much alike. I look around the table and see a tool-and-die maker, a well-to-do suburbanite who sells paper, a high school teacher, a football coach, and a retired navy officer.
Occasionally, out of a curious sense of courtesy, perhaps, we ask one another about our jobs. But no one listens very closely to the answers. Sometimes the feelings are heard—if one of our number has been fired or received a promotion, it is occasion for commiseration or congratulation—but I can’t tell the tool-and-die maker what it’s like to edit a magazine, and he can’t really tell me about his business.
Nor is it because we have discovered some magic formula for conversation. We have varying abilities to articulate concepts and feelings. We say the wrong things, stumble for words, interrupt one another, and miss obvious signals of distress and need.
No, I’ve decided the reason things work for us is because we share a common passion: softball. We revel in it and love to talk about it. We can recall details of games ten years earlier with uncanny accuracy; we can analyze our current team’s strengths and weaknesses for hours on end; we can talk with evangelistic fervor about strategy and our future prospects. No conversation ever strays from softball for any significant length of time.
The best times I’ve had with church people have many elements in common with the softball fellowship I have just described.
They have occurred not because we were alike—my church is made up of people from all classes, varied occupations, and all age levels. And they haven’t occurred because we have discovered new formulas for resolving conflict, or encouraging one another, or discussing the issues of the day.
The best times have come when we all focused our conversations on our passion for Jesus Christ and the consequences that passion has for our present church and the church we want to be in the future.
The implications of this should encourage us to work on several lessons.
First, learn to steer conversations toward our common passion. John Bunyan, in his classic allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress, has the wanderer, Piety, ask the book’s hero, Christian, the perfect unity-promoting question: “What moved you first to betake yourself to the pilgrim’s life?”
Count how many times you hear that question asked in your church in the next month, and you probably will get a fair reading on the spiritual unity of your church. Count how many times you ask a similar question, and you will have an idea of how much you contribute to that unity.
Second, learn your own answer to that question by heart. Write out your answer in five hundred words; use Paul’s testimonies in Acts 22 (500 words) and Acts 26 (550 words) as your models. Sharing stories with others of like passion in the church should be the core of our conversation.
Third, learn your church’s strategy, tactics, and mission by heart. Is our church fulfilling the general mandate of all churches (evangelism and discipleship) and the specific mandate of this church (meeting the needs of this community)? For living churches, that is a common, never-ending concern.
That’s the kind of discussion that reflects the true unity of the church. Anything else is artificial and contrived. Only passion for God produces the unity Psalm 133 describes:
“How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.”
Terry C. Muck is editor of LEADERSHIP.
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
