So I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been going to this Wednesday Night Bible Study. I’ve tried the group out a number of times before and just never really have found that connection. I guess it’s mostly because I was an outsider trying to get in and that’s not always easy. Especially for me since I really AM mostly an introvert. Plus the fact that this is a Casas group and I don’t go to Casas.
Anyway, so it’s been hard to get that connection going but in the last couple months I’ve REALLY felt like I have it now. Well, no… it’s not 100% there, probably not even quite 70%, but it’s over 60% and that’s a heck of a lot better than the 10% that I’ve felt before. See, the main problem has been that over half the group is girls. Normally, that’s not been a problem for me. But in the last couple years, it’s proven to be an issue.
See, I’m a fairly flirtatious person around the girls (yeah I know, shocker!). Generally all I’m looking for is friendship, but I think that I try hard enough to be friends that it backfires. This is going back to my other comment that I’m a mostly introverted person. Don’t believe me? Well, I’d truly prefer to have a small party with some trusted friends than a big one with a bunch of people that I only know halfway. And if it’s a party that I hardly know anybody at, I generally just sit somewhere on the side and watch people. Basically, feel quite uncomfortable until I finally leave.
Ok, so that’s all very interesting, but how does that affect me now? Well, since most of the people in this Young Professionals group (the Wednesday Night Bible Study) are single girls, I think I’ve managed to convince most of them at some point or another that I’ve been interested in them. So we come to the issue, getting them to trust me. Some do, some don’t. Just a matter of working at it I guess. But it’s all necessary since I need to re-build a good portion of my group of friends (just because life happened, nothing else). This all means that there’s a lot of hard times coming in my life I think, I just hope they don’t last too long! 
The truth of the matter is that the entire YP group is awesome. And that’s not just because they’re cool people, but they’re really forcing me to think about the Bible, God and Christianity in general. There’s a VERY wide range of Christian experience represented in the group and so that makes for some very good discussions actually. Because we get the “easy” questions from the newer people that really force us to think about things from the Bible and God that we might not have thought about for many years and then there are the bigger questions that force all of use to look up a lot in the Bible.
To top it all off, nobody in the group is really the “Leader” and nobody has all the answers. It’s ALWAYS a group effort and lots of people speak their minds. Again, makes for good discussions. For instance, on this Wednesday night that just passed, we tried to answer a big question that Christians sometimes get asked. We started by voting on a number of questions that some of us had submitted for a possible topic and then talking about the most popular.
The one on Wednesday night was: “I’m not into organized religion. Can I still be a Christian without going to Church?” This seemed like a pretty easy answer to me (YES!), but some people really insisted the structure of the Church being required. Also, some people had a Catholic background and depending upon the person, that either meant that they were deeply in favor of doing the weekly Church thing, or that they were very much in favor of NOT doing it. Anyway, lots of VERY good discussion about it all (hurts in the Church, reasons to leave, etc, etc).
Again, because of the very wide range of backgrounds and Christian Maturity, this is a group that really challenges my faith and makes me THINK about things and not just take them at face value. Good stuff for sure and certainly a group that I’m hoping to hang out for a long while longer!