Boundry Spanners

I am teaching sociology for some students at Missouri Baptist University currently. Re-thinking sociology is interesting.

Essentially, we are all a product of our society.

We are socialized into a certain way of thinking throughout our lifetimes. We don't really choose what we think, we are given what we think by our society, then we may (or may not) make small changes on the way our society thinks by our influence. We are a product of our society in that a society that needs to punish crime will produce criminals to punish. The society that needs warriors to go to battle will produce large numbers of warriors.

What is interesting is that there has to be an acknowledgement that there are some individuals who break our of the sociological norms. They break out of their sub-group and bring together two separate factions. These are called boundary spanners. We need some boundary spanners.

Let me illustrate.

In our youth group at church we have a lot of kids who have no church background. The main bulk of our church, however, has some church experience, or a lifetime of church experience. The bulk of our church has been socialized into the group. But the youth are literally boundary spanners! They have broken from their group of origin and entered another connecting two separate worlds as it were.

In response to this unbelievable step that many in our youth group have taken, we need to respond to them by stepping out of our comfortable social arena and entering theirs. Every person in our church needs to find a youth on Wednesday night and become heir friend. Then, you can be a boundary spanner too.

Illustration #2

When you witness to a person who is not from the same background as you and the same social group as yours, you are being a boundary spanner. I would love to reach about 100 people in their 20s in the next year. How can that happen? We need a lot of boundary spanners in our church. We have a great group of couples in their 20s right now. But to really focus on this age range we need boundary spanners who are willing to witness to someone outside their demographic.

Being a boundary spanner is not the norm. Break out of the norm. Live radical!