Dear Ray,
I have been thinking about the person who leaves a gathering without having said anything.
We tend to assume that the silence tells us something about him. Perhaps he has little to contribute. Perhaps he lacks confidence. Perhaps he needs more experience before he can supply the others.
But what if his silence tells us something about the room?
What if we have made certain kinds of expression so important that he cannot imagine his own experience belonging there?
Some people can gather their thoughts quickly. They speak with confidence and make their meaning clear. Others carry something for a long time before words begin to form. By then, the conversation has moved on.
The opportunity has disappeared.
I know something of that inward delay. A prayer can be present without being ready for public expression. There can be grief, tenderness, or a turning toward the Lord that does not immediately become a sentence.
We should not mistake that hiddenness for absence.
Paul says that members appearing weaker are indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22). I wonder whether we believe him. We may affirm the verse while arranging our gatherings around those whose abilities make their usefulness obvious.
The quiet member is welcomed, but the gathering does not actually need him.
Everything proceeds quite well without his participation.
That is the contradiction.
If he is indispensable, his absence from our shared experience matters. Something of the body’s supply remains unreceived.
Zoe does not belong more fully to the articulate person. The same Christ dwells in the quiet member. We are receiving His expression through a person, not rewarding that person’s ability to perform.
We cannot solve this by putting him on the spot. Asking a hesitant person to speak before everyone can become another demand to perform. He does not need to be displayed as evidence that we value quieter members.
He needs to be received.
Perhaps that begins over a meal. Perhaps someone sits beside him without an agenda. Perhaps he discovers, through repeated ordinary kindness, that he will not be corrected before he has finished speaking.
And perhaps the gifted members learn to leave room without making a demonstration of their restraint.
There is a difference between giving someone a turn and making room for a person.
A turn ends when the schedule requires it.
Room remains when the words come slowly.
Christ’s supply does not always arrive in a form we recognize as spiritual. It may come through an honest admission, a remembered kindness, or a question no confident person would have thought to ask.
Ray, I do not want the quiet member merely to become more comfortable in the gathering.
I want us to discover how much we have needed him.
The body is impoverished when one kind of ability becomes the measure of every member’s worth.
Let the accomplished brother wait.
Let the unfinished sentence remain unfinished for a moment.
Someone may be finding words for a reality the rest of us have only learned to explain.
Your brother,
Brent
