Investing in Relationships

I confess to you I know nothing about financial investing. I’ve never been to the E*trade website. I don’t ever read the stock market section of the newspaper. I have visited Wall Street once, but don’t really understand how the whole thing works. I can’t explain to you what “insider-trading” is or how someone determines what a “share” is worth. I never even had a course in economics or business in college or high school. Yes, in terms of financial investing I am as dumb as a stick.

But I think I understand relational investing a little better. I thought of that concept again as I came to the passage of Scripture I will be sharing with you Sunday. The verses we will examine are 2 Timothy 3:10-12. It seems that in these verses Paul is reminding Timothy about how much he had invested in him relationally. Here is what he writes as presented in the New Living Translation:
“But you know what I teach, Timothy, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith an how long I have suffered. You know my love an my patient endurance. You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured.”(2 Timothy 3:10-11a)

You get Paul’s point don’t you? Paul is saying Timothy knows about these things because Paul spent so much time with him. They traveled together on missionary journeys together. They served together, ate together and suffered together. Paul took Timothy along because he was investing in Timothy relationally and spiritually. Consequently, a love and loyalty developed between them and Timothy matured into a valuable servant of the Lord.

However, today in the church it seems we are reluctant to invest in relationships as those in the Early Church did. I am not speaking strictly of mentoring relationships, but just the desire to have meaningful personal relationships within the church. It wasn’t just Paul who invested in other relationally. Acts 2:42-47 seems to depict the Early Church as sharing life together. Now most Christians seem content to share 75 minutes sitting in a large room together. I say that not to denigrate those valuable minutes in corporate worship, but to question if that is enough to replicate the community the Early Church experienced. It certainly does not call for much of a relational investment does it? I wonder, how connected we can be with such a limited relational investment? How can we know about each other’s lives, purpose, faith, character and struggles through that arrangement? Can that limited way of “doing church” produce disciples of Jesus Christ?

Obviously, you can guess I think there needs to be something more. While there is not time or space here for a full response to my own questions, I do want to extend an invitation here and now.
I invite you to try ratcheting up your involvement in the lives of your fellow believers at FBC by plugging into one of our DO SOMETHING GROUPS coming this summer. There will be ten groups meeting on Sunday evenings for 90 minutes in homes all over the Lake Wales area. Maybe you have never been to such a group. Maybe you rarely, if ever, have been to a Life Connection Group (Sundays @ 9:15 AM). Maybe you have never attended any type of Home Bible Study. Let this be the time to give a small group a try. Look, it is only 6 weeks! You can handle such a short-term commitment. If you miss due to a vacation or whatever that is okay, just come the weeks you can. Choose one near where you live or where you know somebody else attending.

Obviously, these small groups will not produce the bond Paul and Timothy shared in six weeks. However, I bet you will come away relationally closer to those in your group. Consider it a minimal relational investment. Yeah, it is just buying a few shares, but who knows what the dividends may be. As you hear of others share about how their faith in Jesus intersects with their everyday living you may find yourself eager to invest a little more. And who knows, with such experiences you and I might end up being as big as (relational) investors as Paul.

Gladly investing my all!

Pastor Scott