Dunbar's Number

Hello everyone and happy Wednesday! Summer is quickly approaching; I could tell by the smell of the air, the sound of the birds, and many of my own personal habits that are apparently exclusive to summer time! I still have nearly two weeks of class left, but I am totally pumped for the summer to be here already! This may end up being a smorgasbord of a blog post with a little bit of everything, but we'll see how it goes... so here goes!

Dunbar's number. I want to do an ekphrasis activity with you. Pretend that you are holding psychological research in your one hand. Good. Now pretend that you are holding ministry in your other hand. Wonderful. Now smash your hands together! If you are able to do this in a practical sense, you have my complete, undivided attention. Yesterday during class we were briefly discussing the pros and cons of large churches and small churches. Pros: large--resources, small--intimacy. I'll let you come with with cons of your own. Anyway, during this conversation my professor mentioned the theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one could maintain stable social relationships known as "Dunbar's number." I'll spare you the research details, but the main idea behind this number is that one person can only have a close, deep, intimate relationship with about 12 other people on the first level, and more common social relationships of 150 people on the second level. This has serious implications for effective ministry. I was able to find the actual research study and read it--for which I am grateful; but I was also able to find an NPR article that is far less boring if any of you were interested in further information:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends

Before I die I want to "love and be loved." After a few hours of basketball last night, I decided to give into the petitions of my upper back and relax--no reading, no more physical activity, no practicing guitar, no more movement. The one thing I am able to do while "relaxing" is listen. So I checked my church website and discovered that they posted a sermon that I had not yet listened to. And thanks to this sermon, I was no longer relaxing, but rather engaged in some serious critical thinking about things he brought up in his sermon about family. You could listen to the sermon here (22 April): http://www.firstpreswc.com/listen. One thing that I found particularly interesting was something he mentioned about a wall in New Orleans. It is simply a black wall with a bucket of chalk next to it, and it says, "Before I die I want to [blank]..." and you are to fill in the blank. There are some very interesting sentences posted here, but the most profound ones are the ones about love. And the one that my pastor emphasized in his sermon and the one that hit me was, "Before I die, I want to love and be loved." This means that there are people out there that have never been loved before. Considering this sermon and this observation along with my reading the book of Romans yesterday (specifically CH 14), it got me to think about what it really means to be part of God's family. I'll let you think on that as well...

So maybe not a complete smorgabord of a blog post! I was going to write about more things, but I got a little carried away with the length of the things I did write about. So maybe there will be a post tomorrow! Who knows?! We'll see. Anyway friends, take care of yourselves and each other. =)