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RE: Nosy Woman in Store - 11/19/2008 10:08:48 AM
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pbaribeault
Posts: 1106
Joined: 4/29/2005
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What I'm getting at with my need-for-community comment is not that people should be allowed to give unsolicited advice in a Church context. What I meant to get across is that when the need for community is well met, such as in a healthy Church, it has less tendency to well up and pop out in inappropriate unsolicited ways.
Letting people know which of their behaviours are unwelcome and anti-community is also a function of good community relationships. We can and should be teaching each other healthy boundaries in our Churches and out ongoing relationships...
My thought was just that, given only one opportunity to respond to a stranger in a store, I'd rather take a stab at actually meeting their need (for community and for Christ) than take a stab at teaching them good public boundaries. Both are good, things to do for someone, and both make sense. Both also might not work, and I can see how a failed attempt at meeting the need might result in encouragement of bad public behaviour... but a failed attempt at boundary teaching might result in a missed opportunity to save a life.
Once someone is in community, I certainly would firmly discourage such behaviour from continuing.
(To me this is the same as seeing drug use as a longing for joy and peace, so offering real joy and peace. It doesn't mean that drug use is good or should continue -- just that it's a noticeable on-ramp for the gospel.)
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RE: Nosy Woman in Store - 11/19/2008 10:27:34 AM
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garsyt
Posts: 2212
Joined: 4/12/2005
From: the bottom of the laundry basket
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I understand p, but I can also envision saying this to someone - actually to the women I know IRL and having them say to me "well I already AM a member of thus and such church and have been a church going Christian my entire life." And they are. It may not be the church I attend, but a healthy viable church all the same. Some folks just need to be told in no uncertain terms that regardless of their spiritual lives that they need to mind their OWN business.
For example: My 7 almost 8 year old daughter LOVES to take things to the post office for me. The post office is half a block away and I can see her ALL the way to the outdoor mailbox. She has to cross ONE street to get there. This past summer she took something down to the box for me, while I watched her from my driveway. She crossed the street safely as always going and coming back home. Yet I STILL had a nosy older lady from the community follow her home (and this women KNEW me and where we lived and that I was standing on the driveway watching) and read me the riot act for letting my child go to the mailbox unattended! Now certainly there were things that COULD have happened but if I lived my life and allowed my children to live their lives in fear of the "could haves," well we'd be cooped up in the house all day and never do anything. I finally told this "concerned" neighbor that she really needed to mind her own business. Now this neighbor attends the same church we used to attend, and I have no reason to doubt that she is a Christian.
Blessings,
Garsy
_____________________________
My Blog: www.moredayslikethisplease.wordpress.com
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RE: Nosy Woman in Store - 11/19/2008 12:43:47 PM
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pbaribeault
Posts: 1106
Joined: 4/29/2005
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I was only thinking of a one-off opportunity with a stranger, not of anybody we actually know.
Of course you don't let people you have an ongoing relationship with talk to you that way. Not all Churches function as good communities that meet people's needs for interrelationship, and all good communities learn to say things like, "I want you to be my friend, but I'm not going to deal with you if you continue acting and speaking inappropriately to me."
If the stranger responds with the "already a Christian" response, no problem, you can leave off the evangelistic line and go straight to, "Well, that's great. I wonder if you know how you interfering between people and their children tends to offend people. I hope you find a better way to help people out, or maybe just not step in when things are not your business."
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