Have We Forgotten About Friendship? | The Shock Absorber

Описание: Most churches have cracked the small group. Most churches have cracked the Sunday gathering. But somewhere in the middle, there's a gap. And that gap is why people walk into your church, smile at everyone, and still feel like they don't belong.

Joel, Stu and Tim explore Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of friendship as a genuine ecclesial category. Not a soft add-on to church life, but a biblical, theologically robust framework for how we do community together.

Stu unpacks his PhD research into Bonhoeffer's concentric circles of friendship, drawn from Jesus' own relational patterns: the 3, the 12, the 72, and the 120. Tim brings in Joseph Hellerman's work on brother-sister relationships in Greco-Roman culture, and Joel raises the Dunbar Number — the idea that there's a cognitive limit to how many stable relationships a human brain can actually maintain.

What emerges is a surprisingly coherent picture: biology and theology are pointing in the same direction. And the church has a unique opportunity to be the place where people find all four levels of friendship, not just the big Sunday crowd or the tight small group, but that medium-sized missional community that most churches have quietly let disappear.

They also talk about:
Why Anglo Western culture has drifted toward radical individualism (the Industrial Revolution has a lot to answer for)
Why teenagers on e-bikes might actually be modelling Bonhoeffer better than most churches
What "Soulies Chill" is and why they're experimenting with it at Soul Revival this year
Why calling church a "family" in the 90s might have accidentally given people permission to be distant

Tim's challenge at the end is worth sitting with: what would change about the way you interact with people at church this weekend if you genuinely called them friends?

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Intro
05:11 Friendship as an ecclesial category
13:14 The 3, the 12, the 72, the 120
19:24 Jesus saves us into community
24:03 Cultural differences and individualism influencing friendship
34:09 The Dunbar number and what friendship brings
43:17 Tim's takeaway - How would your relationships at church change if you saw them as friends?

DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE:
The Lesser of Two Weevils - Master and Commander:    • The Lesser of Two Weevils - Master and Com...  
When Church Was a Family, by Joesph Hellerman: https://www.amazon.com.au/When-Church...
Dunbar's Number: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20...

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