The “eat together” test, or, a post about deep community.

(tl;dr version: if you aren’t close enough friends that you could be talking to them on the phone, and take a wizz while they’re still on the phone and they know you’re wizzing, then you probably won’t be friends with them if one of you leaves the social group that links you. this only applies for guy to guy friendships, as far as I know).

It’s always been interesting to me to watch what happens to my friendships when someone I am change the social circles I am a part of, usually by moving. Time for a short history lesson. It’s 2003/2004, and Eric and Heather go to church in Smyrna, GA.

We had a fairly strong community of people, a college Sunday school class that I had generally assumed would stay friends for quite a long time. We went to each other weddings, even being ushers/groomsmens/cake-cutters/servants in said events.

Then Heather and I moved to Lawrenceville, and stopped attending the church. That was 4 years ago. To this day, there’s only one person I’ve stayed in close contact with from that church: Adam Walker.

So that was the summer of 2004, and we started attending a traditional church in Duluth. It was and is a great church, and we definitely found a place to minister both to the body itself as well as the community around it. Same situation, Sunday School class, spent time together inside and outside the church.

Then in the fall of 2005, the d10′s have this crazy idea that God wants them to start a house church. So we transition away from the church in Duluth, and have been part of that house church since. And from our time at the traditional church, there’s only one person I’ve kept in contact with: Josh Brown 1.

So what did I learn from those situations? At least for me, this rule stands: only the friendships with people in a social group that you can comfortably share a meal with alone will be able to survive the removal of the social group, usually by you or them leaving.

So you want to know who you’ll be friends with in 5 to 10 years? Look for the people who you eat dinner with, and it’s just you and them. If you only eat together or hang out when its following some event, or through a group of mutual friends, my short experience in life would seem to indicate that your friendship won’t last unless something changes.

Of all our friends, only the Walker’s and the Brown 1′s were we close enough to that our friendships could stand on their own, not on the link of another person or a church. And I still talk to Adam and Josh at least twice as week. Josh just moved ot Nashville, and Adam loves him some doorhangers long-time.

This is Part 1. Part 2 will look at how this plays out in my current social circle, which has to do with house church and how that’s changed/hasn’t changed things.

Quick notes:
- I’m not suggesting that just cause you ate dinner with a person or couple that your friendship is in someway sealed. There’s a level of closeness you reach with someone that makes meeting for a meal much more… comfortable.
- This post was birthed out of my reaction to reading the first half of Anna’s recent rant, appropriately entitled: “Rant”. The post talks primarily about a similar experience of the Brown’s, where they left a church and assumed they would remain friends with the people in the church. Specifically:

I can remember people telling us on our last few weeks how much they would miss us. Moms and Dads would thank us for the difference we had made in their kid’s lives, then follow that with, it’s a shame your relationship won’t be the same. Call it immaturity or ignorance, my response would always be “well don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’re leaving this church, but not your lives.” I would laugh with Josh about how people kept saying they would miss us in their lives. I always thought they thought we were abandoning them, and we would just kind of laugh and say, BUT WE’RE NOT LEAVING YOUR LIFE! It really became comical, and I laugh looking back at how many times we said things like “but we will still be at your basketball game” or “we will still be at your birthday party” or “we’re still going to dinner Thursday night, right?”

It never dawned on me that when we walked out of that church for the last time, we were basically walking out of a lot of our closest friends lives. Not by our choice. But it happened.

People didn’t know what to do with us. We didn’t get invited to the little socials that we knew were still happening. Just because Josh and I left the church didn’t mean all the kids didn’t go to Wendy’s every Sunday night anymore.

Now, I didn’t know the Brown’s at this point in time, but I think *some* of what happened is what I described above. The friendships were enabled by mutual membership at a church. Now obviously I can’t really speak for the people whom they knew deeper or the people who bad-mouthed them, that’s another issue entirely, but I would guess half of the friendships couldn’t happen without the enabling social org.

Having spoken to Anna further about this (since writing the post), she did say that alot of the people were those she knew grewing up… and I can’t speak for those people, that just sucks.

Look for a follow-up post soon.