Bonding is Good. Bridging is Better.

Yes, people are lonely. The U.S. Surgeon General calls it a serious health threat.

We all know about the troubled humans who randomly engage in gun violence. “He was a loner,” we hear the neighbors say. The shooter in the assassination attempt Saturday is said to have been bullied by classmates in high school according to this profile. Although he wasn’t friendless, the only thing worse than social isolation is being bullied while being socially isolated.

Dr. Robert Putnam, famed author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) was interviewed recently by Lulu Garcia-Navarro here. It made me think – of course – about church. Why is the Church failing to connect people? Why do people feel unsafe in – rather than drawn to – Church? If people are so lonely and there are congregations all over, why aren’t our sanctuaries packed with people seeking friends every weekend?

We all know why.

• People talk only to those they already know on Sunday mornings. God help the ones who don’t look like or act like the majority demographic in the congregation.
• Most people do not see church as a safe place. We have the reputation of being a haven for pedophiles, a trap for queer people, and – sometimes – as too exclusive, too cliquey, too judgey, too much trouble.
• It’s boring. The sermons leave us uninspired. The music is lifeless. They only want our money.

Putnam says there are two kinds of social capital: bonding and bridging.

Most of us – if we are fortunate – have people with whom we have bonded: childhood friends, college friends, work friends, longtime neighbors, family who are like BFFs, BFFs who are like family. They tend to be like us in multiple ways. They are like home to us.

They get us. They know us. They most likely look like us, sound like us, act like us, think like us. Our encounters are fairly effortless. We tend to vote the same way.

I believe that what makes The Church thrive is a culture of bridging – or connecting people who would not ordinarily know each other or spend time together. This is impossible if our church has a culture of stranger danger or racial biases or age discrimination or my-way-or-the-highway-ness or a high stink eye quotient when people “misbehave.” They want “new people” but not if they have their own ideas. They want “young families” but only if they sit quietly.

I believe Mark Elsden when he says that 100,000 churches will close over the next 30 years in the USA. Mark is referring to the property that will be on the market. I’d rather focus on the community that’s lost. Imagine how our culture might shift if 100,000 congregations were more about bridging gaps than bonding together like an exclusive club.

Bonding is good. Bonding is essential in human life. And it’s not enough in terms of building community. Imagine if our congregations were communities in which different kinds of people bonded together because they followed the radical ways of Jesus.

Jesus built bridges between himself and Samaritans, lepers, tax collectors, heathens, the poor, the rich, the foreigner, the beggar, the unclean, the demon possessed, the powerful and the powerless. Imagine a church that authentically creates those same bridges in the name of Jesus.

Show me a bridge-building congregation and I’ll show you a thriving church. There are no exceptions.

Image of the Queshuachaca rope bridge in Peru. It was created by hand and continues to be re-woven regularly to preserve its capacity to connect people over the rushing Apurimac River.