“Community” is a popular concept these days. We want to be in community, live in community, be part of a community. And make no mistake, this is awesome! We do too! We so desire our little church family to be a place where we grow and live in community. We also now have a fifth family member, our dear Debra with whom we share home–and life. Together we are learning, daily, what it means to grow together, and do life together, in community. Two things God has been showing us and challenging us with:
1. True community means making decisions for the good of the whole.
“In our experience, people are often enthusiastic about community until in impinges on their decision-making. For all their rhetoric, they still expect to make decisions by themselves for themselves. We assume we are masters of our own lives.” (Total Church)
Isn’t this the truth? Especially in America–we want to belong, we want the support and camaraderie of community, but we still want to make decisions for ourselves. We don’t want anyone to tell us how to spend our money or our time. We don’t want to have to lay aside our own preferences or desires in order to meet the needs of others. But this is absolutely essential if true community is to take place. While I still have so far to grow in this, I see often how our housemate does this. She always is making choices and decisions in order to bless us, when it would be way easier for her to only think of herself. She inspires me in this.
2. True community means loving people in the community, not the idea of community.
“He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial” (Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 15).
We are still just so stinkin’ idealistic, right? We all have these grand dreams about what “community” should be, where we all share perfectly, love perfectly. Where our kids play nicely together all the time and we never irritate each other. The reality is no matter how awesome the community we all still sin. No community is the picture-perfect idea we imagine, where everyone is funny, engaged, where there are no awkward silences and no comments that rub us the wrong way. The reality is that true community is more challenging than we ever imagined, but better than we ever dreamed. Because really knowing real people, and really seeing true life-change, and really serving each other and loving each other and fighting for each other is what God intended His Body, the Church, to do. We see Christ in each other. We hear from God through each other.
This week a friend–who knew I had a very busy week–came over and picked up all my dirty laundry, took it to her house, and did it all for me. This was such a picture for me of community. Nothing glamorous or sexy about stinky, dirty laundry. But she recognized that part of “doing life” together means “doing laundry” for each other. It also was a picture for me of how community means humbling ourselves enough to let others SEE our dirty laundry. I cringed a little as I handed over baskets full of who-knows-what! But the truth is, we all have dirty laundry, right? Living in community means letting down our guard and letting others help us, even though it means they get to see our grime and smell our stinkiness.
{What does this mean for you this weekend? Who are you “in community” with and how can you make decisions for their good today? How can you let go of any idealistic dreams and simply embrace the real people God has placed in your life? Thank you for embracing ME and allowing me to walk this road with you. I’m teaching a women’s retreat this weekend and would SO welcome your prayers! Thanks so much for engaging in this little online community together.}
3 thoughts on “On True Community”
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Very well-said, Kari. In fact, such community is what endeared me to, and still endears me to Multnomah.
I hope this helps: In Matt Chandlers “The Explicit Gospel” He closes with the illustration of a father and mother, observing their child’s first steps. ” We wait anxiously to see those first:: “step, step, step, fall” and we are so excited to swoop them up and praise them’ because we can see the future and growth and want to encourage them and help them to grow’ The same is true as we see people come to an understanding of the gospel. We need to encourage them and not focus on the fall, But focus on the steps or growth. I suggest you read Eph. 3: 14-19: Starting :”For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” FF (Community) God bless your new community, encourage the first steps !!!
I’m learning this in a new way. Praying in hope that I get better at true community, the real deal.