For many weeks now, a column as been rolling around in my head -- something about "We just should not go there." The basic theme is that just because we can do something does not mean we should. I was going to discuss it primarily in terms of reproductive science where all the options of in vitro and surrogacy and so forth and so on have created moral questions and circumstances and complications that I just flat out believe are beyond mankind's ability to solve. I was also going to touch on divorce and blended families and such briefly in that column as well. I may yet write that column, but circumstances have overwhelmed me once again, and I find I need to address the issue of divorce and blended families from a different angle right now.

The last few weeks, and the last week in particular, have seen me dealing with much grief in those around me. The last six weeks have seen much death on my world. Fortunately none of it has been a direct hit, no one I dearly love has died. But many that I dearly love have had someone they dearly love die, and in many cases in horrific circumstances. These situations have all involved divorce and blended families, in some cases multiple divorce and multiply blended groups. Each situation also involved children and young people. It has been fascinating, and somewhat painful, to watch -- particularly the young people.

In virtually all of these cases, the young people have very much withdrawn in response to their grief. They have not bonded; they have not united with others around them in mutual support and grief. They have viewed grief in general only in terms of how in affects them.

There appear to be three primary reasons behind what I have witnessed. The first is that for these young people it has become common place for people to leave their lives. They are hardened to the grief because they have seen so much of it in the divorces and such that for someone else to leave, even by death, just is not that big a deal. The second is that because their family is such a fluid sort of thing, they have no experience at actually bonding with someone. True supportive bonding requires a sense of permanence about a relationship that these kids have never experienced, because they have never seen a permanent relationship. Finally, because divorce is usually (not always, but usually) a selfish act, they have been taught in their most fundamental relationships to look out for themselves only.

It was so readily obvious to me that what these kids needed was a relationship with someone they could trust -- a relationship with someone that would always be there -- a relationship in which the other cared for them more than the other cared for himself, and a relationship in which they learned to do the same. My gut wants to start yelling about curbing divorce, but I think that horse has left the barn -- we need to learn how to deal with these situations, we can’t make it go away.

Jesus Christ is the only wholly dependable and truly permanent relationship I can ever hope to have. Even my lovely wife and I occasionally miss the communications mark, or let each other down. People in the situations I have described desperately need a relationship with Jesus. The church's job is to help them find that relationship.

Can such a relationship be structured? Think about this for a minute. Would a wholly dependable and truly permanent relationship have boundaries that can be described? I don’t think so, because those boundaries would define limits to the relationship -- thus it would be only semi-permanent or reliable only inside the lines. So how do we help such people find such a relationship?

I don’t know the entire answer to that question. Creating a program and shoving a person into a slot in that program does not help. Programs have boundaries and limits, and the point of the church is to model God's love without boundaries and limits. Placing some rules and restrictions on a person is part of helping them find a relationship with Jesus because love simply will not allow them to "do whatever they want."

Here's the bottom line, relationships breed relationships. My relationship with my parents grew out of their relationship with each other -- very literally. My relationship with my wife grew out of our relationship with mutual friends. I know there are "relationship programs" out there (video dating services, etc.) but most relationships I know that really work well grew out of other relationships that are working pretty well.

If we want to breed relationships with Jesus, we need to have good relationships with Him, and with each other. We don’t need a better system to "track" visitors -- we need to know that everyone in the church will reach out to the visitor and connect with them, remember their name the next week and invite them back. We need to know that people in church are inviting their neighbors. To do that, we face the very difficult task of making better people of the ones we already have in the church.

So often programs start to develop in a church to "work around" the congregation, because they are not reliable or dependable, or gifted, or whatever you want to call it. The answer to bringing Jesus to the world does not lie in working around such people, it lies in helping them become gifted, or dependable, or whatever you need them to be.

Spreading Christianity means spreading Christians. It's as simply as that. It does not mean building a better mouse trap, it means building better people. People cannot be formulated, they cannot be programmed -- They can be nurtured. Nurturing is an individualized activity. Yeah this is hard work.