Loneliness in a Hyper-Connected World: Part 2

Dan Hurst:

So, we’re continuing with what we started in the last podcast, talking about loneliness in a hyper-connected world. This is Revitalize and Replant with Mark Clifton right there and Mark Hallock over there.

Mark Hallock:

What’s up guys?

Dan Hurst:

And we have Matt McNaughton on the controls. I’m Dan Hurst. And we have five points, we only got through the first two the last time.

Mark Hallock:

And we’re going back to one of them right now.

Dan Hurst:

Oh, we’re going back to one-

Mark Clifton:

About the pilot, remember?

Dan Hurst:

The pilot.

Mark Clifton:

On the airplane with the story.

Dan Hurst:

Your pilot.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah. We’re going back to that.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah, you were talking about this.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah. Hand it to Clifton. Tell us, Clifton.

Mark Clifton:

Well, we’re talking about highly connected and we fly a lot. All of us do. And you are totally packed in those airplanes now. Every flight you get on it’s like, it’s going to be a full flight. Put your bag under the front seat and all that kind of stuff. And it’s going to be a full flight. So we all get in there and we’re all crammed in these little planes and nobody’s happy and everybody puts their headphones on. Nobody’s looking at each other. We’re crowded in there, but we are definitely alone in many ways.

Dan Hurst:

Oh yeah.

Mark Clifton:

So this plane I got on the other day coming from New Orleans, the pilot standing at the entrance to the plane as you get on and he’s handing out beignets from Cafe Du Monde. “Would you like one? Would you like one?” Well, this is weird. Yeah, people were taking them. And we get on the plane and he walks back and I noticed he takes this nine-year-old kid up to the front. And I think he’s going to show him the cockpit and all. We talking to the nine-year-old kid a little bit. And then he gets on the mic and he says, “This is when we usually make announcements.” But he said, “I know you don’t normally listen.” He said, “So we got a new person to give the announcement.” It was a nine-year-old kid. So he told this nine-year-old boy what to say. “This is flight so-and-so leaving New Orleans. We’re going to arrive in Kansas City. We’ll be flying at 35,000 feet.” The pilot would tell him what to say and then he would just say it.

Kansas City, the weather’s going to be such and such. And please fasten your seatbelt. And unless you see the seatbelt sign, stay seated. And even when it’s open, please stay your seated because it could be turbulence. And then the pilot said, “And if there’s turbulence, it’s not the pilot’s fault. He really does know how to fly a plane.” And everybody laughed and he said some other funny things. And then the pilot said, “Let’s give him a hand.” Everybody gave him a hand. Little kid was just beaming as he walked back to his seat. In that instant, that pilot created community in that plane.

Dan Hurst:

He did. Yep.

Mark Clifton:

He created community. We all quit looking at our phones. We were looking at that kid. We were happy for that kid. It was an instant in a plane where every… It wasn’t some stupid joke that a flight attendant tells. We’re all pretty tired of those to be frank about it. But this was a kid who was beaming because he got to give the announcements on the microphone. It was a pilot that had good sense of humor. And so how do we intentionally in our church worship services and in our church culture be intentional about creating. Just because people are in a group doesn’t mean that they’re connecting to each other.

Dan Hurst:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

And it really relates. It was that pilot’s personality. It was his smile. It was his winsomeness. It communicated. And I look at pastors sometimes and some of us look like we’re the most unhappy people in the world when we walk into pulpit or even we walk in among their church people. So we need the people who resonate with joy and hope and optimism and then find ways to connect people together. If need be, get a nine-year-old and have him read the announcements on Sunday morning. Something like that.

Mark Hallock:

That’s good, man.

Dan Hurst:

Well, we were talking about how if visitors come, it can be the loneliest place in the world for them if somebody doesn’t really take the time to honestly, sincerely welcome them and make them feel like they’re glad they’re a part there. And this is actually the third point of what we were talking about. And that is that if your people aren’t really connected and they don’t really believe that they’re family and that they value each other, they’re not going to treat visitors that way either. Well, that’s true. And so this point that younger and older believers are often disconnected weakens discipleship and encouragement.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah. Well, we talk a lot about the power of intergenerational, not just relationships, but discipleship. And this is biblical. Paul talks about this. Older folks and younger people need one another. We need one another in the church. That’s one of the beauties of the church. In fact, I think it’s a crime that in many of our churches, we divide every… It’s the most isolated. Go ahead, you got your hand up.

Mark Clifton:

I got my hand up.

Mark Hallock:

Go ahead.

Mark Clifton:

For those of you, we don’t have this on video, but I’ve started raising my hand so that I don’t just interrupt.

Mark Hallock:

Mr. Clifton, go ahead.

Dan Hurst:

The problem though is he raises his hand and we’re not looking at him. So he just sits there.

Mark Hallock:

He starts wiggling. He starts waving. Okay, Mr. Clifton, please pipe in.

Mark Clifton:

I’m like Horshack on Welcome Back Kotter. That was a long time ago. A long time ago.

Dan Hurst:

Nobody knows what you’re talking about. Mr. Kotter. Mr. Kotter.

Mark Clifton:

Mr. Kotter. When I was a kid, the only time my sisters and my mom and dad and I were together on the way at church was on the way to church and on the way home. That was it. We get to church. They went with the youth. I went with the children’s church. My mom went in the preschool to teach preschool. My dad went in the sanctuary. It was like the one time we were together was in the car. We’ve siloed generationally so much.

Dan Hurst:

I know. Yeah.

Mark Clifton:

There is a place for age appropriate biblical education. But brothers, there is a huge need for intergenerational relationships among believers and to create that kind of family. And that will not happen by accident.

Mark Hallock:

Nope.

Mark Clifton:

You have to be intentional. And Mark, tell us how your church is intentional at that point.

Mark Hallock:

Well, I’ll tell you one of the things that we’ve tried to do over the years is form intergenerational discipleship groups. So in other words, and this has been so cool, my son who’s now in his 20s, but I can remember when he was meeting on a regular basis with a man in his 70s and a young father in his early 30s, and there was a teenager, my son who was like seven or eight years old, and they would meet together. They’d go to breakfast together, they’d get in the Bible together, they’d pray for one another and they would love each other. Imagine the power of that kind of intergenerational group meeting together. We had groups like that with women and with men and young guys, whatever. When we were small, we did that just because quite frankly, that’s all we had. But as we saw it, we’re like, “This was missing in the church.”

How can we integrate generations? By God’s grace, that’s become part of the culture of our church, but it’s so important. We’ve talked on this podcast before. I know in Denver, a lot of people move to Denver to get away from something.

Mark Clifton:

Get away from family.

Mark Hallock:

I mean, honestly, they come to Denver because they want to go to the mountains. They want to ski. We get a lot of families. But here’s the downside to that. We see firsthand what life is like when your mom and dad are on the other side of the country and you’ve got kiddos, you’ve got aging parents, and we’re missing that intergenerational piece. This where the church has an opportunity to step in. In fact, I think we need to step in and how can we be family for one another in some ways, you know what I’m saying? When we’re so spread out.

Mark Clifton:

Well, I think it’s important for us as pastors to consistently remind our congregation, not just once, but often, whenever the opportunity comes up through a sermon, whatever, to remind your congregation, you have two families. You have a biological family which you had nothing to do with. And some of you, God blessed you with a wonderful biological family. Others of you, it’s just sort of benign. Let’s be frank. Some of you, the biological family that you’ve been given, it’s a struggle. I get that. But you have a second family and that’s your church family and that’s a gift of God and it’s a great place.

Mark Hallock:

Amen.

Mark Clifton:

And that’s why we call each other brother and sister. They don’t use those terms anymore, but we grew up with them because it really was a family. And that’s encouraging to people who realize I do have a second family. I have a biological family. Maybe they’re spread out across the United States, maybe there’s some brokenness there, but I’ve got this wonderful church family. Listen, it truly is as meaningful, and I mean that. It’s a gift of God. You’re part of the body of Christ. It’s important. It’s not just being a member of the same church. And so highlight that and celebrate that. And for people who are truly looking… And a family is all generations.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, that’s right.

Mark Clifton:

We don’t silo. We’re all together. And man, if you’re in a normative size church, you can really lean into that.

Mark Hallock:

Yep, exactly. I love that. I love it.

Dan Hurst:

Well, that takes us on to number four.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah, this is big.

Dan Hurst:

Because families are all about hospitality. I mean, real families. Boy, I’ll tell you when… Now I didn’t grow up in the United States, so I never really. I’ve got cousins that I’ve never even met, but I can tell you this, when churches got together as families, there was some hospitality going on here.

Mark Clifton:

In Honduras.

Mark Hallock:

Oh, yeah.

Dan Hurst:

Yeah.

Mark Hallock:

Oh, I bet.

Dan Hurst:

And then when I came to the States, that’s where we saw the same thing in churches. Families got together and even families in the church. It was interesting because there’d be big families and other big families and other big families, then a small family and then a single person, but they were all family or a fellowship or something like that. We have to be intentional about that in our churches.

Mark Clifton:

Well, we started this podcast, the last episode, which was the first part of this one with talking about the book –

Mark Hallock:

Bowling Alone.

Mark Clifton:

Bowling Alone. And one of the things he points out in that book is that people, they don’t have hospitality like they used to. You don’t have people over to your home like you used to as often for a variety of reasons, but you just don’t. And that carries over into the church as well. People don’t come to each other’s homes. They don’t fellowship in each other’s homes like they used to and have meals and dinners and things like that like they used to. Mark mentioned asking somebody after church to come to your house for dinner every Sunday and those kinds of things. We just don’t do that the way we used to.

Mark Hallock:

We just don’t do that, yep.

Mark Clifton:

And so the result of that is we’re not engaged in intentional intergenerational kind of thing. Every Saturday night that I can remember as a grade schooler, my family, we would go to John and Bertha Domecue’s house and eat dinner and watch Lawrence Welk.

Dan Hurst:

Oh no.

Mark Clifton:

Seriously. And talk about intergenerational, right?

Mark Hallock:

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Mark Clifton:

At the time I didn’t really like it, but now growing up, I see those old Lawrence Welk shows on TV. I remember that sweet lady, Bertha Domecue was blind, completely blind, but she cooked. I don’t know how she did it. She cooked great, man. But she cooked and I can just see her running around that kitchen and hugging me and giving me the food I wanted. Those are sweet memories, right? Oh, that was intentional that my folks intergenerationally brought me along in that kind of way. I just think we have to be… In a church, we need to be intentional about that.

Mark Hallock:

Yeah.

Dan Hurst:

I got to ask you a question. How did you grow up on Lawrence Welk and now all of a sudden you went through the ultimate perversion to get into just bluegrass?

Mark Clifton:

Bluegrass, yeah.

Dan Hurst:

What happened there?

Mark Clifton:

I don’t know. I did do that. I still watch Lawrence Welk on YouTube sometimes just to –

Dan Hurst:

No. You do?

Mark Clifton:

I watched him the other night on YouTube. I did. He had a pianist named Tiny, and you know I know Lawrence Welk, if I remember Tiny, the pianist. It’s true.

Dan Hurst:

I just like to watch him.

Mark Hallock:

I’m bringing us back. I’m bringing us back.

Dan Hurst:

All right.

Mark Hallock:

I’m bringing us back.

Mark Clifton:

Wonderful, wonderful.

Dan Hurst:

Wonderful, wonderful. I’ll never forget Lawrence Welk doing one toke over the line. Do you remember that?

Mark Clifton:

He did sing that.

Dan Hurst:

It was so bad.

Mark Hallock:

I’ve got an idea. I’ve got an idea guys I got to share that’s a really practical thing.

Dan Hurst:

Oh, you mean like something connected to what we’re doing?

Mark Hallock:

Connected to what we’re actually talking about.

Dan Hurst:

Okay.

Mark Hallock:

Because three words, listen, here are three descriptors of many homes in our day. Okay? Busy, private, and closed off.

Dan Hurst:

Yes.

Mark Hallock:

Think about that. And it’s true.

Mark Clifton:

Busy?

Mark Hallock:

Busy, private and closed off. Meaning busy, we’re a busy house. Okay, so then how do we slow down? Private meaning we want to block. This is our space, right? Whereas it used to be like, man, our home is your home. You know what I mean? And then closed off. We actually don’t want people and we want people to come. So here’s an idea. This has been the most simple idea that we’ve done at Calvary, maybe ever, and it’s been one of the most popular things we’ve done. And every church, every pastor listening can do this. In fact, I’m going to challenge you to do this. Every spring and every fall, we have what we call family dinners. Literally, here’s all we do is we just tell the church, “Hey, if you want to be part of family dinners, just let us know.”

So we’re not going to schedule if you don’t want to go, but here’s what we’re going to do. On three Fridays in the spring and then three Fridays in the fall, and you look at your calendar, and if you want all three, great. If you want one of them, great. We’re going to have a dinner for you at somebody’s house with three other families, and you don’t know what home you’re going to be in, and you don’t know who’s going to be there, but we’re going to put it together.

Mark Clifton:

That’s so cool.

Mark Hallock:

And you’re going to go and you’re going to show up and you’re going to have a potluck together and you’re going to make some new friends and you’re going to have a blast. We do this three. Family dinners is all we call it. Man, we have. I am not kidding. I think last we checked 60 to 70% of our church. That’s a lot of people who sign up for family dinners. And I’m telling you, it has changed everything because you find people.

And what’s so cool, the idea is not that you just go to the same, every dinner’s different. So it’s not like you’re making this lifelong small group commitment necessarily. You’re literally saying, “We’re going to have a night where the McNaughtons and…” Imagine our wives and our kids all getting together just for one night, and we’re going to have a blast together. We’re going to get to know each other. We’re going to share a meal together and see what God does. Well, part of what happens is, I promise you, one night spent, even if it’s a little awkward, you make some friends. And then next month, we’re going to be in four different homes. And then the next month we’re going to be in four different homes.

Dan Hurst:

I can tell you right now that Clifton is having the heebie jeebies right now.

Mark Clifton:

I am having the heebie jeebies.

Mark Hallock:

Well, listen, this is what we say. We’re saying, “Hey, this may freak you out, but you’ve got to trust us.”

Mark Clifton:

Yeah, I know.

Mark Hallock:

You were built for community.

Mark Clifton:

I know.

Mark Hallock:

People want to know you in this church. People want to know you and you need to know others. Literally, it’s the easiest thing we do. We schedule it. So we have folks on staff who literally put names together, trying to find some natural connecting points, and then we send it out and say, “Here’s your dinner. You’re going to be at the Hallock house on this week, and here are the three other families that you’re going to be with. You’re bringing this.” Boom, boom, boom. Point being, it’s really simple, but it’s a baby step toward helping people get connected. You’d be amazed actually how many people jump at it, like new people. They’re like, “This is the coolest thing ever. We’ve never been part of a church that actually does this.” Because most churches, if they have anything, they have a Sunday school class option, that’s great.

Or they have a small group option. And sadly, in many churches, small group options, the rest of your life, you’re committed to the small group.

Mark Clifton:

Plus it becomes, I won’t say a clique, but it becomes a clique.

Mark Hallock:

And again, hear me well, listeners, there’s a place for that. We have community groups. We have those groups. But what I’m saying is, in light of this topic, just do something to create some space for people to get in another person’s home. Part of this is just hospitality and share a meal together.

Dan Hurst:

By the way, hospitality is a ministry. It’s a biblical ministry. It’s a biblical ministry.

Mark Hallock:

And the host homes are all family. There are people who want to host and he uses their gift and they’re excited to do it.

Mark Clifton:

I love it.

Mark Hallock:

Let’s fight for hospitality. Here’s number five. Ready? Number five, many people suffer quietly. They carry grief and anxiety and addiction or family pain all alone. In a hyper-connected world, we are filled with people who are lonely as they suffer quietly.

Dan Hurst:

I think any given Sunday, I look out at the congregation and I think there are people, every person here is either dealing with grief or anxiety or addiction or some sort of family pain. Everyone.

Mark Clifton:

Our friend Frank Lewis made it abundantly clear that statistically, everybody you preach to on Sunday morning, their life will be impacted by cancer or addiction. Either them or someone close to them. Everybody.

Mark Hallock:

Directly.

Mark Clifton:

Directly. Every Sunday morning. You got to understand people are going through a lot of hurt that they won’t ever talk to anybody about. They have no one they can talk to about. And so we’ve got to create these environments, like you said, through the dinners and through relationships so people feel free to share their burdens because people are carrying these things around. Look, suicide is epidemic, especially among middle-aged men who carry all these burdens and don’t share them with anybody. And so I really believe the anxiety is so prevalent among teenagers and children. There’s a lot been written about that. Grief, people don’t know how to handle it. They don’t know how to deal with it. Sometimes people in grief, they’re made to feel guilty if they grieve, that every funeral has to be a celebration of life. We don’t want to be sad at a funeral. No, they need to be able to grieve.

Mark Hallock:

That’s right.

Mark Clifton:

You got to help people work through that grief.

Mark Hallock:

Exactly.

Mark Clifton:

And be there and love them. We’re supposed to mourn with those who mourn.

Mark Hallock:

Amen.

Mark Clifton:

And weep with those who weep.

Mark Hallock:

And pastor, listen, that includes you.

Mark Clifton:

Yeah.

Mark Hallock:

That includes me.

Dan Hurst:

Oh, man.

Mark Hallock:

We need to grieve. We need to have places where it’s okay not to be okay. Do you know what I mean?

Mark Clifton:

Right.

Mark Hallock:

And if you’ve bought into this idea that you’re the rock and you got to be strong for everybody and you could never be weak. Listen, man, you’re dead meat because you’re not the rock. Jesus is the rock.

Dan Hurst:

I think as a pastor too, first of all, you’re dealing with your own issues, grief, anxiety, maybe addiction, family pain. So you’re there. You’re just like those people. But now you also are bearing the weight of the people that you shepherd, correct?

Mark Hallock:

That’s exactly right.

Dan Hurst:

And so that’s even, to a greater extent, pastors are really struggling with that. And if you are not a pastor, I’ll bet your pastor’s dealing with stuff like this.

Mark Hallock:

Oh my gosh, for sure.

Dan Hurst:

So it’s something that you have to be really hypersensitive to, that people are really, really suffering. I have a guy in my church who is, he has a terminal disease and he tells me that when he comes to church on Sunday morning and he’s moving slow, but he’s there and he talks about, he said, “I come to church.” And he said, “It’s the only time of the week that I feel alive.”

Mark Hallock:

Wow. Wow.

Dan Hurst:

All of a sudden, man, that gives you a whole different perspective when you’re preaching and you’re ministering. And that’s another weight for me as a pastor, but it’s also a realization that to what we’re talking about, it’s a hyper-connected world, but people are lonely.

Mark Hallock:

People are lonely.

Dan Hurst:

You got to connect with them and minister to them.

Mark Hallock:

That’s exactly right.

Mark Clifton:

I would suggest too, and this is another podcast, but I did it when I was at Warner. There’s a couple of funeral homes close to the church and I just went down there and said, “Hey, if you need any help, call me.” And they have, and they did. Even still, sometimes I get a call from them because you would be amazed how many people pass away and they have no church at all, and they tell a funeral home, “We don’t have anybody to do the service.” I would show up and sit with these grown adult children and they would talk about their mother. This just happened, the most recent one I did. I said, “Tell me about your mom.” They’d tell me, “Well, she liked to go to the boats, liked to gamble, and she liked to go to Branson.” “Did your mom ever go to church?”

“No, I don’t think she ever did.” “Did your mom ever talk about the Bible? Any Bible stories?” “No.” “She like any hymns?” “No, I don’t think so.” Here’s a person who grew up in Kansas City without any connection to any of that. Now, how you minister that family and how you do the funeral, that’s another podcast for another day, right?

But it is an opportunity to minister and to be aware that there are people within the shadow of your church who when their mother dies, they have no relationship to anything. They are there and they are lonely and they are hurting and we have got to find ways to connect to them and be with them. So volunteering to do funerals for people who don’t have a pastor. Again, if you need help, call me and I’ll tell you how you don’t want to give false assurance of salvation and all that. I’m not talking about that, but there are ways you can do that funeral in a way that presents the gospel and ministers to those people as well. So we got to do this, man. We got to love people. We got to be hospitable. We got to connect people in an unconnected world. The church has to be a family more now than ever before, and we can do that. God wants us to.

Mark Hallock:

It’s good.

Dan Hurst:

It’s a choice too.

Mark Clifton:

It is.

Dan Hurst:

Not only that you make as a pastor, but that your people make, which is part of revitalization. That is a choice. Thank you for spending time with us today. I hope this has been helpful to you, this two-part series on loneliness in a hyper-connected world, because we know that your people are there and you have a responsibility to minister to them in their loneliness, and they have a responsibility to minister to the people, their brothers and sisters in Christ and your visitors in this hyper-connected world that we live in.

Thank you, North American Mission Board for making this possible. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing. It helps us through the different algorithms that the different platforms use to get the word out that there is a podcast that is addressing some of these issues that are important to us as pastors and as church members that are in revitalizing churches. See you next time.