Before becoming a Senior Pastor, I served for over a decade in youth and collegiate ministries. One thing I miss about those days was the deep relational connection that existed that is hardly seen among adults in churches today.

Back then, we planned events around deepening relational connection and we focused on making sure that no youth or young adult left them without at least an attempt to help them connect with others. Today, thanks to social media, I am able to see those relationships continue in beautiful ways as posts with former youth holding the new babies of friends from youth group, former college students getting together for meals, and even working together in business ventures.

For many of these continued relationships, church was where they began. They’d come on the invitation of a friend and knew no one else. They’d graduated with a whole family of friends that had been fostered in the halls of the youth spaces.

When I became a campus minister, I saw this deepen even more. Young adults, many of who grew up in congregations apart, came together in hallowed spaces on campuses because they yearned for a place to connect with others who were also journeying the long road of faith and college. In many of these cases they didn’t know another person in the room when they’d first arrived but built relationships that led to later participation in the major life events of one another.

The Bible is full of illustrations of this type of relational connection around faith. Jesus didn’t start a movement of people that just co-existed in faith spaces, he began a family that centered around love for him and radiated out deep care for one another. Deepening relationships has always been a core value of the Church.

I think this value has been lost in many congregations. Divided by theology, politics, and even a desire to keep things private, many congregations are no longer built around community. Instead, we’ve built them into clubs where people do what they must to become ‘members’ and then show up to do what edifies their desires in faith. There seems to be a loss of care for one another, grace-filled conversation around differences, and even the ability to lay aside divides to worship and serve together.

In the old story of Peter Pan, Peter is famous for not wanting to grow up. He believes that growing old is a curse to existence. In many ways, it feels as if the congregations of today are living into his fear: by growing older we’ve cursed the community we’re supposed to be.

You see, what was always impactful about those youth and college groups I served was that they did not let theological, political, or other such differences divide them. Sure, they had their normal “I-don’t-like-you-this-week-for-this” squabbles that come with young adulthood, but they always found a way past them to discover the wonder of what could be in a community driven by love for Christ and one another.

I wonder what the Church of today might look like if reclaimed some of that youthful optimism and forgiveness? I wonder what could be if we could find a way across our differences that deepens our relationships in ways that change our lives and the world around us?

Perhaps, this might just be the saving grace of the Church that is more divided than ever. I wonder if this might just be what people outside the Church need to see in order to realize who Jesus really is?

I don’t believe we, as the Church, need to fear growing up. I believe we need to fear losing one another as we harden our hearts and minds in ways that push us apart. Relationships have always been the bedrock of Christian community. Maybe it’s time we reclaimed them as the core value of the Church that they are.

It might just be what saves us.

“In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.” – Peter Pan