Whose standards do we seek to hold each other to?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that people are at different points in their journey towards Jesus. Even people I have similar values to will make different decisions to me at times. But I have noticed a tendency for us to be frustrated when people don’t meet the standards we have for ourselves.

I noticed it in myself first. I would become disappointed and then frustrated when people would make choices I didn’t agree with. I found myself withdrawing and even feeling anger when people who I was in relationship with behaved in ways that I wouldn’t myself. After a while I realised that this was damaging my relationships, giving me more stress and certainly not helping my objective of encouraging others to move towards Jesus.

After I saw it in myself I began to realise how common it was in others. Particularly when you have a group that has some goals and ideas about what it wants to be like or achieve, this kind of conflict seems very common.

Recently I sent an email to the members of Loam encouraging them to consider the year ahead and make some choices about their level of commitment.

Over the last few months it has become increasingly clear to me that if we are to function well as a group we need to know what to expect from each other. In the absence of an opportunity to understand what we can expect from others we tend to default to assuming that they are aspiring to meet the standards/commitments that we hold for ourselves. While this seems to be the common approach, I’m not convinced it is the wisest and so have been thinking it would be very useful for us to take the opportunity to make clear exactly what we can expect from each other.

I mean this in a very practical sense. How regularly can we expect you to come to worship gatherings? How regularly can we expect you to come to Sunday dinners? Are you interested in being involved in events or activities beyond our two regular gatherings for the week? I think answers to these kinds of questions will limit our levels of frustration, because we will know what to expect, but also allow us to keep each other accountable to the commitments we have set for ourselves.

For this process to work and be healthy it must be done in a spirit of grace and love. It cannot be about judgement or creating hierarchies within our community. We must realise that while we journey together we are at different stages of life and faith and that that doesn’t make anyone better or more important than anyone else.

To this end I’d really like to encourage you all to take some time to reflect about the year ahead, to think about how much time and energy you are going to have and to realistically assess how much of that you are willing to invest in Loam. It’d be great if when we got together in February we could share with one another about our choices for the year ahead. This way we will be able to get a sense for what we can expect in the coming year and commit to helping each other achieve what we’ve aspired to for ourselves.

As well as the decrease in anxiety and frustration I am very much looking forward to the potential benefits in the area of accountability. I think Christians struggle to keep each other accountable, partly because it is hard to confront one another but also because we don’t have a clear understanding of what people really expect from themselves. A clearly articulated commitment with permission given to keep each other accountable could make a great difference.