17 Sep Bear Spray, Trail Guides and Getting Lost with Your People

Every year, I go hiking with a group of close friends somewhere in Colorado. Sometimes we get lost and barely survive…sometimes not (get lost, that is).

Some of these friends are definitely more “city kids” than others, and one, from inner-city Detroit, has an almost pathological fear of bears. As soon as we get to Colorado, he immediately goes and buys two things: canned oxygen and bear spray.

Because we know this about him, this year, we, shall we say…had a little fun with it.

When you arrive at the top of the mountain on the ski lift at the place where our hike began, there’s a small gift shop where water, snacks and some survival supplies can be purchased.

This year, that friend went to go buy himself a hat, and while he was gone, the trail guide, a very distinguished man in his 60s from Switzerland–an expert outdoorsman who spoke impeccable English–came up to us to ask if we had a plan for our outing and if he could be of any help.

So we said, yes, yes you can. Our friend is in the gift shop right now and is unusually afraid of bears. Would you mind, when he comes back, start telling us about the near certainty of seeing a bear in the woods today?

The trail guide gave us a wink and said yes, so when our friend got back, he did just that. He made up this amazing story all about how people had been spotting bear cubs all over the mountain that morning, “which was okay.” What was “not okay” was that no one “had spotted the mother bear yet.” We were welcome to go up, of course, but they had search parties out looking for the mother, and we should be “very careful.”

Our friend’s eyes got larger than dinner plates, his face fell into a panic, he leaned forward and he started looking around at the rest of us to gauge our reaction. But we all held it together and just nodded faithfully.

Then the guide concluded with a darkly humorous joke about how one is able to detect black bears from grizzly bears (grizzlies are far more likely to attack humans) ending with the conclusion that the spotted cubs were grizzlies.

All of a sudden, the scheming friends just fell apart laughing. We literally could not hold it together anymore, and over the next few hours, there was spontaneous laughter. Our other friend vowed revenge. It was…perfect.

Now, I don’t know if you have friends like that–I mean friends who know you and can create moments with you of adventure and laughter that carry you in tougher times.

I hope you do, I want you to, but I also know that if surveys and statistics are true, you likely don’t.

One of the things I want Mosaic to be, among many other things, is a place where we can find friends.

Something we say a lot in our leadership circles is that “the mission draws us together, but our relationships keep us together.”

And I think that’s true. We need friendships, meaningful relationships to help keep us on track with God’s big redemption plan for the world.

And especially for all our singles at Mosaic, I want to invite you to our upcoming conference where the theme is all about that. It’s called “Friendship: Single, but Not Alone.”

We’ll be looking at what it means to have friendship with one another, with God and in our dating relationships.

There will be meals, fun, competition, escape games, a professional development seminar utilizing the StrengthsFinder tool, and more all aimed at helping you make connections that might turn into something genuine.

It’s coming up October 8 and 9, and the cost is only $60!

We would love to have every “single” person there. And married folks, if you’d like to volunteer, hang out and have some fun, we would love to have you as well.

You can register here to attend or to support in a volunteer capacity.

There will be everything you need to start (and continue) to make genuine, Christ-centered friendships.

Well, except bear spray. You’re on your own for that.

Morgan