Okay, time to get this blogging thing started. The conversation must continue....or start...or whatever.
Over the last number of months, my wife and I have been considering the concept of "community" in the church setting. More than that, we've been discussing what draws people TO a community. I've been reading (and re-reading) a number of books on Christian community. Naturally there are the classics (Life Together - Bonhoeffer, etc.), but there are also some new books, like Joe Myer's "Organic Community" (which is a bit extreme in spots, but the points are made well.)
Last week, I spent two days at a conference for work. I serve on a "Partner Advisory Council" meeting (PAC) for Microsoft. For the past three years, I have been on that PAC with the same guys (and one lady who is a sweetheart), and it has become a quarterly meeting that we really look forward to. We have a common goal -- to improve the quality and solution set in a particular collection of Microsoft products. We have a common background -- mostly Enterprise Systems Integrators. We only meet quarterly, but most of the 25 guys on the PAC have become very close friends. We keep in touch via e-mail, and when we are in the same town (whether for an event, a business trip, etc.) we try and gather for a meal. As I was driving home on Wednesday night, it struck me that I am in community with these people. More than that, it is a community in which I can say what is on my mind. I can be me. I can argue without disresepcting. I can laugh. Moreover, I can accept that others in the group have significant things to offer.
So, what are most small group ministries in churches missing? (Including the small groups ministry at my own church) Why do I look forward to meeting with the PAC more than my weekly small group? I don't claim to have an answer to this....I just claim to be thinking about it. **GRIN**
First and foremost, the PAC meeting is not forced intimacy. When I was brought in, I was not told, "These are your family, and you will share intimate thoughts with them because they can be trusted. " (I'm not saying that's how it was in our church small group, but that's sure the intention.) With the PAC, I was placed in an environment that "enabled" intimacy. For two days a quarter, we sit in a locked room (well, not LOCKED locked, but I think the point is made) and discuss our businesses, our experiences, and get some teaching/training/marketing hype along the way. We share meals together. We get various gifts/trinkets for serving on the PAC, usually with an MS logo and the name of our PAC. Bags, backpacks, jackets, etc. We do social events together...like sushi bars, or seeing a show -- something completely unrelated to our businesses or to the PAC itself.
Community happens.
I do not believe that there is a recipe for community. But, I also don't think that getting together once a week, and going through some silly fill-in-the-blank workbook and talking pat answers about life's questions is a way of doing it either. I want meat in my relationships. I want to be able to say, "Hey, this is what I'm learning. This is how I'm growing. This is what I'm really struggling with.", and I want to have people in the group actually DISCUSS it with me. Instead of saying, "Okay, moving on to the next topic."
What are your thoughts? What are the keys to community that you have found?
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Community
The idea of community is becoming harder and harder for me to talk about. Two Sundays ago I was teaching a class at church about this very topic. In Proverbs, a verse says, “Without vision the people perish” (KJV). I struggled with this because the only person that I had ever heard talk about it made it so individualistic that it seemed to not have any place in the Church. Then I looked at the same verse in several other translations. One said “prophecy” and another said “revelation.” I began to think about this more and more and realized that both prophecy and revelation are lived out in (or at least on some level involve) community.
I changed the verse slightly and made the comment that “where there is no community, the people perish.” This seemed to make more sense to me because it was a broader statement about vision, revelation, and prophecy. So often, when we hear these three words we only think about the future. We have marginalized prophecy to talk of the end times, visions to seeing the future, and revelation to none other than the Revelation of John found at the end of the Bible. While I can agree that each of these elements are present realities we have failed to holistically define these three words. Without understanding them in the context of community, we really cannot define them at all.
A prophet, for example, was not someone who told the future (though some of them did have pronouncements about the future given to them by God). Instead, their primary “job” was to proclaim the Word of God to their community. They often pronounced judgment on immoral ethical, social, and religious behavior and practices. Sometimes, they would offer words of hope—hope of restoration, redemption, and salvation. Both sides of the coin were necessary in relating God’s message to his chosen people. Without this message, this vision, the people would indeed perish.
The prophets served a purpose within the community. They offered the vision of God as a guiding light in a world ever increasing with darkness. Knowing this, can we really make the jump to saying that without community, the people will perish? Obviously, there have been many people in our history who have survived lives of solitude. However, was that how we were intended to live? Is solitude the social structure that God created for us to live in?
The creation account in Genesis offers only one thing that God said was “not good.” Chapter 2 tells us that God created man (Adam) and that he brought all of the other creatures he made before Adam to find a suitable “helper.” When none was found, God proclaimed that it was “not good for man to be alone,” and he then created Eve. I believe this points to the social structure that God designed for man to live in, community. This, taken from the very image of the Triune God (“Let us make man in our image…he created them, man and woman, in his image”).
In the discourse found in John 13-17, Jesus tells his disciples he has a new command for them to follow. They are to love each other as he had loved them and that “greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.” How can this sort of love exist outside of community? Jesus also said that “they” will know us by our love for one another. Can we truly love outside of community?
In the same discourse, Jesus prays for the unity of his disciples. Is unity possible outside of community? Is it possible to have an individual relationship with Christ, apart from a community?
Potential for community exists everywhere. It exists in our work places, in our churches, in our collection of friends, neighbors, and families. We live in an overpopulated world where there are people everywhere. In the US, we live so close to our neighbors we could literally spit from our yard and hit the house next to us. We live in apartment buildings, with residences stacked one on top of the other. We ride the bus and sit next to strangers for our hour commute to work. And yet, we know so few of those who are our “neighbors.” When Jesus was asked who a “neighbor” was, instead of answering the question he explained how a neighbor was to act and exhorted the lawyer to be a neighbor.
So what are the elements that define a community? Does the example of a neighbor have any bearing on this subject? What about Jesus’ exhortation to love and his prayer for unity? My belief is that community is a necessary part of our relationship with Christ. I am not sure that a person, who has the capability, can live in relationship with Christ without being a part of a community. The more I study about God and his word, the more I am convinced that our relationship with Christ is manifest in our relationship with others. And love must be the backbone of those relationships.
Humanity seems to gravitate toward like-minded (or like-skinned, like-culture, like-socioeconomic status etc.) people. We are a people that prefer homogenous situations. Perhaps there is no hope of a truly integrated community. We are a country that claims to have beaten segregation and yet, we segregate ourselves all the time. We, who are white, go to a church with mostly white folks. We take no pains to understand the cultures of those around us who are “different.” Christians, the one group that seeks to offer a place without segregation, has been one of the worst at opening up its doors to those who are “different.”
This doesn’t always mean we are racists. Perhaps it plays out in our disgust for those Christians who just “don’t get it.” I am guilty of this too. I get tired of the people who think they have it all figured out but know so little of God. But then, do I have the right to judge them? Do I have the right to pronounce their ignorance and blame them for the superficiality of the relationships they proclaim to have? What does the command of Jesus to love each other and his prayer for unity have to say about this? If I really take the time to look inside myself, I find that I am no different than “they” are. I don’t really get it all either (as much as I proclaim to). So who deserves the judgment?
Maybe part of the unity is to accept the “forced community” that some churches attempt to foster in their small groups and just love them the way that Christ called us to love each other. Perhaps I should lay aside my frustration and disgust of their unwillingness to reach beyond the superficial and offer the love of Christ instead. It will not be to me that they will need to answer, nor will it be to them that I will need to answer on the day of judgment. It will be to Christ alone and he will decipher what is in our hearts. If we continue to allow our own judgments get in the way of loving others, is there anything but judgment left for us? Perhaps part of our test will be whether we made any attempt at loving others who are completely different than we are. Even the ones that we find frustrating and aggravating. This begs another question, what has forgiveness to do with all of this? Can we forgive those who frustrate us, even if we are in the right? Did not Christ forgive those who crucified him, saying “the know not what they do”?
Romans 14:1-4 says this: “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”
Is there really a formula that we can prescribe for what a community will look like? Perhaps it is best to take Jesus’ example and offer instead what we are to be to a community rather than define what a community is. Our responsibility in a community is to love, to forgive, and to accept. If others in the community are not abiding by these “rules,” it is not for us to condemn, but to lead. The best leaders are those who provide authentic examples of living what we truly believe. Can we really say we understand the fundamentals of what community is all about if we, who “understand,” break away from those who don’t?
Someone once said, “in essentials of faith unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.” Does the lack of this attitude in our “communities” deserve like-minded response from us? Saint Francis of Assisi said to “always preach the gospel, use words when necessary.” Perhaps our commitment to charity and love is played out in our preaching the gospel with our lives. To create community by being loving, forgiving, and accepting, even when we believe it undeserved; to be faithful to the unity that Christ prayed we would have. After all, no matter where people are in their relationship with Christ, we are unified by and through him.
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