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Community  as Theological Necessity
Mark A. Moore

 

Mark Moore is indicative of a much larger movement in the church generally, a missional-incarnational ecclesiology less about policy than people. We are trapped in a cult of pragmatism. Moore saw this and sought to address it. His church plant, Providence Community Church, aimed at a communal narrative more organic than programmatic. Says Moore, “I set out to shape a culture that would be driven by theological convictions on community rather than pragmatic approaches.”

Moore recognizes this cult of individualism-pragmatism in the West has invaded our theology, turning the gospel into largely a business transaction. It isolates and alienates. It is a Christocentric gospel that intrigues Mark and his congregation. Their study of Acts 2:42– 45 revealed a very different way of life together. Says Moore, “This way of understanding the gospel and the nature of Christian community should serve as the basis for thinking and living in all Christian communities. . . . A kingdom-focused gospel demands not only devotion to Jesus, but also devotion to Jesus’ people as faithful citizens in his kingdom.”

1. Do a study of Acts 2:42–47. How does your congregation stack up? How could you find ways of realigning your faith community to better reflect this picture in Acts? Gather a small group of souls committed to the kind of community Moore describes. Begin to pray daily that such a vision finds its way into your congregational way of living and being together.
2. What would Believe, Belong, Bless look like in your congregation? How can you begin in small ways to exemplify this way of living among your Christian family? In your homes? Among your peers and colleagues? What are some steps that may be taken to help your community align more closely with Providence’s biblical discoveries?
3. Jesus invites us to “believe in God. Believe also in me.” Moore reiterates this idea in the following, “Believing is meant to convey a continuous, ongoing commitment to the gospel—living in the reality that Jesus is the reigning Lord and we are citizens of his kingdom.” Do you think “believing in Jesus” means presently what it was intended to mean? If not, why not? If so, in what ways?

 

 

Contagious: The Surprising Things
That Make Community Transformational
Jan Johnson

 

The word “community” is ubiquitous these days, tucked into conversations in every corner, both ecclesiastical and non. Jan Johnson seeks to sort through what true Christian community is and is not.

Her central idea: “I’ve become convinced we learn about God best through relationship with each other. There are certain things about God we don’t grasp until we see those things in another person.” There is no real transformation in a bubble. It must happen in community, where our rough edges are blunted against those of another.

The truest, redemptively viable collective, she suggests, must be about unity, not unanimity; diversity, not uniformity. It reaches out even to the enemy.

True koinonia is found in agape, not in the feelings of tenderness often accompanying such fellowship. Self-sacrificing love underpins all. Johnson reminds us of Paul’s injunction to “pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1), not intimacy. Like humility, we discover community only when we’re focused elsewhere. To focus on intimacy is to lose it. To focus on Christ, who is love personified, makes both community and intimacy possible. In fact, committed community becomes our “school for love . . . where I will learn to love,” as Johnson intimates.

Our shared Christian life, not our ideology or even theology must be our basis for biblically Christian community. To “have the same mind” (see Phil. 2:5) is not simply to agree on everything. It is to have the mind of Christ, which is love, and love is the great motivator of change and mission. It’s why love stands at the epicenter of the gospel. To remove condemnation is to invite love and, in so doing, invite a universe full of glorious possibilities. Moreover, it becomes the basis for mutual submission, humble confession, guidance, and service indicative of the same.

1. Spend time in prayer and discussion in your own small group. Determine how to better reflect the diversity and inclusivity of the kingdom of God. Intentionally seek out some new participants with whom you might not normally associate. Share a meal together and begin the process of learning the deeper lessons of Christian community.
2. Practice Jan’s “holy space” as you consider a rift in fellowship with a brother or sister. If possible, find audience with that person and, in your conversation, see in your mind all your words filtered through the loving presence of Christ. As you listen, do so with “the mind of Christ,” hearing and responding as he might.
3. Pray about someone in whom you may invest yourself this year. Seek them out and gently begin a relationship of anam cara, or soul friendship, where you may both share unimpeded the deepest secrets of your lives. In so doing, you invest in one another’s conversion. Commit to document this journey together.

 

 

Moving Communities Inward
A Conversation with David Johnson

 

Johnson’s understanding of our primary journey inward helps set the stage for a leadership team intentional about formation and, ultimately, community and mission in their local congregation. He wisely suggests that community is the result of pursuing something else, something far deeper still—the search for God in the human soul. Johnson believed strongly enough in these things that he sponsored his staff through the two-year experience of Ruth Haley Barton’s Transforming Community program.

“Change flows from leadership team into the whole church,” says Johnson. Because there is a deep commitment both to community and to the leadership at his church, Johnson has seen a sustainable transformation through his team and into the congregation at large. He concludes, “Our succession plan has shifted from being focused on who the next leader will be to becoming a people who are being formed in Christ.”

1. “When we are all on the same page in terms of ministry goals and values really good friendships happen.” Do you agree? Can local churches find depth of relationship with differing goals or emphases? If so, how? If not, why not?
2. What would it take to convince your own church’s leadership team to experience Ruth Haley Barton’s Transforming Community program? Seek to become an advocate for your church staff in this pursuit. Commit to pray five minutes every day for a month for the leadership of your church. Document the results.
3. Describe your own inward journey. Is it a welcome
4. one? A fearful one? Why or why not? Together with a spiritual director or trusted friend, discern what your soul needs most as you journey inward with God. Journal your progress.

 

 

Becoming the Beloved Community
Mark Scandrette

 

Spiritual formation, in its deepest, most rewarding sense, must be lived out among community where another’s iron sharpens our own. Mark Scandrette seeks to address this very conundrum and begins with the following archetypal statement, “The human heart longs for community—a place to belong, to be known, to be understood, to be accepted, affirmed, and loved.” His article is a congregational response to this pathway toward relational wholeness. He proposes a practical means of interrelational health through a process of mutual forgiveness.

Scandrette has the congregation work through four categories of tension and conflict: social distance (how we use relationships to buttress our own insecurities, treating them unfairly in the process); disappointment (unfair or unrealistic expectations, often unrecognized); boundary challenges (inappropriate boundaries), and wounding (actual infractions in which we commit wrongdoing against another).

Scandrette prescribes for us a healthy understanding of what forgiveness actually is, “an intentional and voluntary action of giving up . . . anger and resentment . . . so that I no longer wish for . . . revenge.” However, it doesn’t deny the potential for continued mistrust or even physical distance between parties. He provides three steps in this process, involving exploration of the pain involved and needed clarification, an examination of one’s resentments and, most importantly, seating one’s pain in the larger offense of the gospel. To see our pain from a cosmic, paschal-mystery perspective is to add a depth of meaning to it, which in itself, can be healing. “We become the Beloved Community as we reach out in confidence, realizing our truest identity as beloved children of God.” Amen to that!

1. Utilizing Scandrette’s own process he calls “Becoming the Beloved Community,” create an intentional gathering of your family, small group, or congregation in which to practice the process of forgiveness. Identify gifted facilitators to assist. Have them guide the group through the experiment.
   1. Identify persons or groups with whom we have conflict.
   2. Through prayerful consideration, root out experiences of discomfort created by those conflictual relationships.
   3. Clarify the nature of the tension (social distance, disappointment, boundary challenges, wounding).
   4. Determine in your community what action(s) need to take place to move on. Navigate together how best to address one another’s broken relationships.
   5. Pray over them.
   6. Reconvene at an agreed-upon time in the future to evaluate and retool for the future.
2. Again, using Scandrette’s own rubric, follow the three steps he outlines in the process toward forgiveness. Gather together around a fireplace. After prayerfully considering the steps, each person writes on a piece of paper the name of the offending person, how they offended, all the resultant feelings experienced, and your commitment to forgive. Then, in an act of faithful surrender, toss the paper into the fire with following prayer: “Gracious God of grace, we have all been given what we do not deserve in the cross. I now offer the same to another for how they have offended me. I choose to forgive in order that I may find freedom and the courage to press into all life has for me, for us. Thanks be to God.”

 

 

Christian Community: More Than a “Wish Dream”
An ”Interview” with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cynthia Bezek

 

Cynthia Bezek’s thoughts bow to those of the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a mock interview. Based on his book Life Together, she chooses a series of questions through which she mines the deeply devoted soul of the German martyr. In so doing, we are given a peek into his theology of Christian community of which he wrote and cared about so much. Here are some of those foundational ideas.

First, Christian community comes in one way alone, through Christ, from whom it gets its name, identity, and mission. Second, Christian community is based not on illusion, “rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream,” or wishful thinking, but squarely on the finished work of Christ rooted in grace. It is a fellowship forged in truth from God’s perspective. Third, detachment, neither for the purpose of reengagement or for engagement lacking intent to nourish the root of such engagement are, alike, faulty and to

be spurned. Neither “fellowship without solitude” or “solitude without fellowship” can promise true Christian community, says Bonhoeffer. Fourth, “the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them . . . active helpfulness” with an end of bearing one another’s burdens. Fifth, we discern when and how to impart to one another the severity and mercy of God’s Word, which, quite often, may lead us to be silent. Sixth, we seek to admonish rather than chide and seek the inner disposition of grace toward our brothers and sisters by means of interceding for them.

1. “The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium.” Since the presence of well-meaning brothers and sisters can offer such a panacea of grace, how does this statement of Bonhoeffer’s strike you?
2. Commit to reading Life Together in a small group of friends over an agreed-upon period of time. Determine what you’d like to glean together. On that basis, have each person design his or her own interview with Bonhoeffer, using portions of the book as his “answers.” Compare and contrast with those in the group. What common themes emerge? What differences?
3. Choose one or more of the themes found in Bezek’s interview. Discern areas in your relationships with others that Bonheoffer’s words might address. Prayerfully determine steps to amend those relationships where broken.