Why is it that so many church people feel so untransformed? So stuck in patterns that they don’t understand or don’t want? Why in their most reflective moments do they often feel alone, misunderstood, disenchanted or at the very least, out of place in regard to their community experience with others, even in the church? Certainly many reasons feed this epidemic of noncommunity, but the church hasn’t helped solve this quandary. Perhaps a fresh look at what incarnational community is and aspires to be, might be an antidote for our current malaise.

When Sherry TurkleSherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011). wrote Alone Together, her deep and thoughtful book describing how technology is affecting social interactions in our present world, little did she know that her book title gives voice to a much bigger problem shared even within our own sacred communities. This “alone together” dilemma is more pervasive than the power and influence of social media affecting our relationships; it is a very real disposition for many Christians in the church today. I have to confess right out of the gate that this issue is important to me both on a professional level as a pastor (and now professor who trains pastors) and as a disciple of Jesus who believes that our current hyper-individualism and consumerism is crushing our ability to be the church whose best witness to Jesus is local groups of people (churches) who have become genuine, loving communities. My experience has taught me that I am a better person when I live within a context of other disciples who love me, who know me, and who have genuine connectedness and insight to help me grow when I can’t see straight or even see myself in a healthy way. In other words, I’m not at my best when I am isolated and alone. You see, community is a critical means for your transformation and mine. But we’ve lost our muscle memory of what it is, though the dull ache in our hearts still remains. No matter what our particular temperaments and personalities, God created us as communal creatures in spite of its complications and challenges. If anything else, the Gospels are beautiful and messy portraits of community where we watch Jesus apprentice a diverse array of disciples as he taught, modeled, and formed them into a community shaped by his agape love. If you doubt this intended outcome, reflect again on Jesus’ words the night before he was taken to the cross, “A new command I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35, NIV.).

Knowing Jesus relationally comes to fruition when we, in community, live in such a way (“agape-ing” each other) that then reveals Jesus. The reality is we are shaped by and for community. Yes, it is complicated, but it is critical for our growth in Jesus.

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01.  What Incarnational Community Is and Isn’t

The form of community that Jesus embodied and taught throughout the Gospels is what I would call incarnational community. Here’s how I would delineate what this type of community is and isn’t. It is a type of community that embraces five foundational values:

1. It is intensely local.
2. It is face-to-face and eye-to-eye.
3. It is enacted through dialogue and disclosure.
4. It is reciprocal (a mutually embraced commitment).
5. The goal is transformation (it changes who we are becoming).Inspired in a lecture by Eugene Peterson, Spiritual Formation Forum, Long Beach, CA, 2004. “Doing the Right Thing in the Wrong Way: Why Spiritual Formation is Not an Option.” Points 3–5 are my additions.

 

Clearly, this is a specialized type of community within our current community models, although it is perhaps the oldest and most proven community system ever practiced, and present in most, if not all, monastic communities, and embodied in today’s current twelve-step principles and practice.Twelve-step practice thoroughly embodies the five values of incarnational community, but practices them strategically in different relational settings. For example, there is no “crosstalk” or direct feedback in the standard twelve-step meetings, but there is significant feedback between sponsors and those seeking a sponsor within the twelve-step program.

The church in particular has embraced a variety of different forms of community models within our Christian churches that do not fit this type of community expression. One type of model is built around the need for connection or affinity; groups such as MOPS,Mothers of Pre-Schoolers. Bible studies, sermon discussion groups, travel or golf groups; even prayer groups fit this category. These groups aim at a type of community that brings people together around interests or passions; their aim is discussions or support. This is certainly not a bad thing; groups like these fill a real need in people for relational connection or specialized interest. But deep knowledge of each other and Christlike transformation, though it might be a hoped-for outcome of these groups, is not generally the aim, nor do they have the baseline of agreed-upon values to produce such an outcome.

Another type of community for many whose lives are on the go (especially millennials), are groups built around the web (e.g., blogs, email, Skype, Twitter, Facebook). Without question people feel a sense of connection and honest conversation through the unique medium of a social network of people. Through the years I have spoken to many who say their primary community experience is most profound through this medium. Yet web-based community does suffer from some deep gaps: most particularly a false sense of relational reality simply because online community doesn’t provide face-to-face, embodied exchange with any real frequency. Also, these online relationships have a discretionary quality—interactions are always in my control and timing with our current technology. Turkle explains this challenge with online community, saying,

 

Online, we easily find “company” but are exhausted by the pressures of performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other’s full attention. . . .

Overwhelmed by the pace that technology makes possible, we think about how new, more efficient technologies might help dig us out. But new devices encourage ever-greater volume and velocity. In this escalation of demands, one of the things that comes to feel safe is using technology to connect to people at a distance, or more precisely, to a lot of people from a distance. But even a lot of people from a distance can turn out to be not enough people at all. We brag about how many people we have “friended” on Facebook, yet Americans will say they have fewer friends than before. When asked in whom they can confide and to whom they turn in an emergency, more and more say that their only resource is their family.

The ties we form on the Internet are not, in the end the ties that bind.Turkle, Alone Together, 280.

 

Another contrast between an incarnational model of community and the other models I cited is clarifying the aim or outcome of them. “Affinity-based” or “web-based” community tends to aim at connection, interest, and information as an outcome, while incarnational community is aimed at moral, ethical, and relational transformation as an outcome. We really need both of these. Ideally, our community experience should aim at all of these outcomes, but sadly they most often don’t, missing, instead, the incarnational community experience that is the “elephant in the middle of the room.”

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02.  Moving Forward

So, on the practical side, how can we move toward a community that embraces the five key values of incarnational community? Here are some practical considerations to consider before becoming this kind of community:Taken from Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001). Excellent explanation in chapter eight.

1. Geography: There needs to be a degree of realistic proximity between group members.
2. Availability: Assessment of realistic commitment to the group.
3. Frequency: How often you meet will determine depth and outcome.
4. Spontaneity: Depth of relationship is not just scheduled, but includes spontaneity.
5. Common meals: Nothing draws you into a group like eating together.

 

These characteristics are meant to carry the five values of incarnational community, and a key is that there must be a “reciprocal” agreement among all the participants. Time after time I have witnessed groups disintegrate because there is not a reciprocal agreement of the group members. The group cannot be carried by the passion of just one or two people in the group. These groups work best when group members agree to self-imposed group values, and do not rely on the imposition of others. This is how groups best come together and how community has a chance to really ignite.

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03.  The Fruit of Incarnational Community

A few years ago while attending a seminar on this type of incarnational transformation, I watched my friend who was an experienced trainer model a Socratic approach of inquiry throughout this weekend experience. I was struck by the insight and freedom this model brought to the group through his sensitive and thoughtful leadership. After the seminar I asked him why this model is so powerful. He reflected and replied with this statement, “In my experience of thousands of hours doing these seminars, I am convinced that there is no transformation without feedback from others.”

I agree with this statement. If you think about it, much of our transformation comes through the insight and feedback of a good counselor, spiritual director, pastor, close friend or family member, and yes, from the voice of God through the Holy Spirit. I have come to the renewed conviction that my transformation into Christlikeness (the character of Jesus) will not occur just through reading the Bible more, spending time at the monastery, attending church services, or immersing myself in worship. Instead it will profoundly happen only when I engage others face-to-face with honesty and invitation to speak into my life and vice versa. The effect of this kind of community is powerful and transformative.

How do I know this works? Let me tell you about a proven model that actually changed people to such a degree that we called it a revival—the second Great Awakening.

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04.  John Wesley with a Proven Method(its)!

John Wesley was an Anglican pastor in the eighteenth century whose life was touched by God, and he was called to preach, teach, and evangelize in his own context. The world that Wesley resided in was not a pretty picture. As Charles Dickens described for us, England and Europe in the 1800s were “the best of times and the worst of times.”Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 edition (New York: Gold Classics, 2014), 1. This era was on the front edge of the expansion of the modern industrial revolution, and people were packing the cities with hopes of a better and prosperous life. Employment was available, but it was hard work and long hours. There was a deep gap between the rich and poor. Environmental conditions were awful, due to little or no regulations on factories. Women and children took the brunt of low-wage manual jobs with no regulation and abusive work hours. Society had severe problems of corruption, slavery, child abuse, illiteracy, and alcoholism. Wesley watched his own Church of England become impotent, unable to engage the challenges of his time.

Still, Wesley worked tirelessly at preaching and teaching the “good news of Jesus,” and he began to see the effect of his message. Yet there was something missing. What were people to do after they responded to this gospel? Were they to be left to the institutional churches where they would be neglected, withering on the vine? Wesley’s answer was not to leave his institutional church setting, but to devise a plan for creating incarnational community within that setting. The genius of the Wesleyan revival was an instructional tool or method more than it was a theological distinctive or an organizational structure.

For Wesley, the medium of conceptual transmission may be just as influential as the content of the message.See D. Michael Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting; A Model for Making Disciples (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Publishing House, 1997). Wesley created a three-tiered approach to forming an incarnational experience for those who sought ongoing transformation. This powerful methodology was what created the name by which those who followed Wesley’s teachings were called: the Methodists. He called these levels of community involvement Societies, Classes, and Bands. All three aimed at transformation of the total self.

These three levels of community invited change in these spheres:

1. Societies (large groups) Focus: cognitive change
2. Classes (mixed-gender, smaller groups) Focus: behavioral change
3. Bands (same-gender small groups) Focus: internal change

 

All three levels of community were heavily weighted on a Socratic-inquiry model of face-to-face interaction; in other words, there was honest disclosure and assessment of one’s life through thoughtful and reflective questions.

Though Wesley had created a transformative model, he still faced a dilemma. Would he aim his reformation of the nation from the top down, working among the intellectuals, the clergy, and the aristocracy? His own church wasn’t even interested in his program. Or would he take his message of Christlike transformation directly to the people—the countless number of England’s illiterate and unchurched working class?

Instead of seeking out places of power, Wesley chose a more humble route. He went to the people, meeting in public places and homes. This movement caught fire. But what exactly did they do in these groups?

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05.  There’s Nothing Life a Good Questions

Societies were very similar to a midweek service (singing, worship, prayer, and instruction). Wesley encouraged people to attend their own churches and not to forsake Sunday worship. But he understood a Sunday model of growth was severely limiting. The societies actually grew out of the classes. They became the infrastructure that eventually turned into Methodism and enabled his system of discipleship to continue.

Classes were led by laity (not clergy) and open to all who desired “to flee from the wrath to come, and be saved from their sins.”Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting, 76. Behavioral change from the inside out was the expected outcome.

Leaders were key to these classes. They first shared their own failures and challenges, modeling such disclosure before others. This sharing opened the door to honest exchange, allowing people to speak of their own inner thoughts and feelings. The class provided immediate face-to-face confrontation to resolve conflictual behavior within one’s self. It allowed people to inspect their outward walk; to inquire into their inward state; to learn what their trials were; to instruct, repeat, enforce, or explain the core principles of the faith in order to live them out. Wesley discerned this to be the process toward transformation.

Bands (Wesley’s favorite meetings) were small, homogeneous groups seeking “to grow in love, holiness, and purity of intention.”Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting, 112. The group environment was one of ruthless honesty and frank openness in which members sought “to improve their attitudes, emotions, feelings, intentions, and affections”Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting, 112. through a series of face-to-face, interactive questions. Here is a sample of questions for membership into a Band group.Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting, 120–121.

1. Have you the forgiveness of sins?
2. Have you peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ?
3. Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit that you are a child of God?
4. Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart?
5. Has no sin, inward or outward, dominion over you?
6. Do you desire to be told your faults?
7. Do you desire to be told all your faults, and that plain and home [clearly and honestly]?
8. Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?
9. Consider! Do you desire that we should tell you whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?
10. Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?
11. Is it your desire and design to be, on this and other occasions, entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart, without exception, without disguise and without reserve?

 

Once a person became a member of a Band meeting, the next level of inquiry would occur during the regular gatherings with questions as these:Henderson, John Wesley’s Class Meeting, 118–119.

1. What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
2. What temptations have you met with?
3. How were you delivered?
4. What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be a sin or not?
5. Have you nothing you desire to keep secret? [i.e., Is there anything within you that should be made known?]

 

Clearly, these meetings were not for the faint of heart, but one can see why lives would be different through this process. While I’m not advocating that we wholeheartedly adopt Wesley’s method and structure today, it does provoke some deep and candid reflections for those of us who lead and guide the Christian community about how we can do better. I believe we must do better!

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06.  What Can We Do Now?

Wesley’s model is one that produced real transformation in Christ among those who adopted it—but it is only one model of incarnational community. There are many ways incarnational community can be lived out, but we need to be intentional about how and why we come together in this kind of community. What can we do?

• Be clear about your need for feedback from others. Culturally we are fine with limited exposure of ourselves but are very uncomfortable inviting feedback from others. Inviting feedback is risky, but vitally important. Feedback is critical for us to change and grow because others often see what we cannot see in ourselves.
• Be wise when throwing yourself into this kind of “give and take” feedback—don’t do it with those you have little or no relationship with in the first place. Yes, there will always be unhealthy people who will take advantage of us relationally (especially in the church), so start with people in your natural sphere of interaction, those you have some relationship with already.
• Realize that making your family your feedback circle can be a good thing, but it is not without its complications. Our families are those who truly know us best, and we need to listen to feedback from them, but family is hardly objective and not without bias. Family is an important mirror for us, but we really need a wider circle than our families to get a more objective view of reality for our transformation.
• Always view incarnational community as part of a larger system of help. We all need input from pastors, spiritual directors, counselors, coworkers, and God’s commitment is to make us into the image of Jesus so we see the big picture as God’s hand at work through many means.

 

For the first ten years of my Christian life I was immersed in an incarnational community life that now, as I look back, was a kind of mini-revival of sorts for me. In spite of its flaws (and it had many), it looked a lot like a Wesley model. It delivered a vibrant, relational, and transformational experience at its core. It was risky, hard, and very messy, but wonderfully exciting. I grew in ways I never thought possible. I think I’ve been searching for this kind of community ever since those days.

Could it be possible that this kind of community could be revived? Whenever there is some kind of “epidemic” in our world (as there is now for community), eventually people seek an answer for it. It is time for the church to rethink incarnational community.