The challenge of building Christian community
There is a unrelenting challenge to building community in the church. The challenge is this - some of the people who are the most needy for the healing and blessing which Christian community provides are the least skilled at building it. Just try that thought on for a moment. Wait, don’t turn away from it so quickly. These are things that on the face of it would seem to make it impossible to ever win in this quest.
And yet listen to the simplicity of the scriptures - I Peter 4: (9) Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. Here is the Apostle Peter talking about one of the most elemental aspects of building Christian community - hospitality. But notice the implication: this is something which we have a tendency to grumble about (or else why admonish the church to do it without grumbling?) Now think about this with me for a moment. What is it that causes us to grumble about hospitality? Is it the inconvenience of it? Is it having people in our homes and “violating” our personal space? Or is just the reality that hospitality as a general principal is messy?
It is probably all those things. But my experience tells me that the last of those things is the most consistent reason why building community is so challenging. Relationships are messy. It would be wonderful if we were all paragons of mental health and emotional stability - but… that isn’t the case, is it? We all have our idiosyncrasies, we all have the ways in which we have been formed poorly, we all have our sinful tendencies. Moving toward one another, learning to love each other, learning to serve each other, and to be patient and merciful towards one another could all by itself be a full time job. Yet, God calls us to this. He calls us to build real community. That means time together, that means lots of pretty mundance stuff as well as lots of patience and persistence. That is one of the reasons why hospitality is so important to this process. Hospitality, in and of itself, is kind of laboratory in which we create the opportunities to grow together. Of course there is more to it than that, but it certainly isn’t less than this.
This is why simply thinking that attending a church on Sunday will somehow make it possible to build Christian community is naive. Sunday morning is principally for the purpose of worship and the hearing of the Word of God. Sunday service is also a time for us to seek opportunity to minister to one another. All of that can produce some intimacy, but think about it… its a pretty slim amount of time to devote to actually getting to know one another. Imagine spending 2 hours a week with your spouse, and of that two hours about 10 or 15 minutes of that time involved actually talking to one another. It would take an extremely long time to get very close to a person spending 10 or 15 minutes a week talking to them. Even if one attended a small group, it is virtually impossible to build relationships of any substance without actually spending time with people in more informal settings.
The building of community is like just about everything else in the Christian life - a mixture of discipline and dependance on the grace of Jesus. God will give me the grace to be patient. But what good will it do me if I avoid, or don’t plan for opportunities to be together with people where I will need the patience? God will give me the grace to love. But what will I need that grace for if I don’t put myself smack down in the middle of people’ s lives. Each of us have a set of demands and challenges that make building Christian community a chore. But none of that lets us off the hook. After 25 years as a pastor, and over 50 years of being in the church I can tell you that to experience anything more than perpetual peripheralitus (a new variation on the word periphery: meaning being on the edge or the outskirts) I must engage a church and be willing to put myself out there and be known.
Share your thoughts on this.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:30 am
How do you encourage us to achieve this goal? Have dinner parties and enjoy our fellow church members socially. Maybe our church members could have potluck dinners once a month and move it to each others homes? Being a new participant at this church, I feel everyone’s warmth and friendliness but not sure how to build personal relationships. I am attending the retreat in June and am hoping this may open doors for me to others.
May 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Vicki raises a good question… Can others comment? I will respond at some point… but I would love to hear from others…
May 20th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Vicki,
Here’s a funny scenario… in the last 10-15 years, “community” has become a buzz-word in Christendom, but while lots of talk has happened about the idea, very few of us know how to be a part of a community. I love your thought of having dinner parties. Who doesn’t like a chance to chat over a good meal? But I suspect these are only starting points.
I think it was John Lennon who said something to the effect of “life is what happens while we are making other plans.” Community is a bit like this as well, I believe. Community is what happens when people very self-consciously choose to be interested in others’ lives in addition to their own (maybe even more than their own - Philipians 2). Maybe through dinner parties I might get to know someone enough to invite them along to run errands. Or I might trust them enough to admit that I need help with my yard. Or I might drop some groceries by their house because ShopRite was having a two-for-one sale. These are merely examples to say that building community is more mundane than magical. The Holy Spirit often works in the most humble of other-centered actions.
I have found myself trying to pray more consistently for my “community.” Some people I know specifically how to pray for them and can intercede with boldness on their behalf. Many others I am left praying more general prayers because I have not dropped groceries by their house or given them a call recently or had them over for dinner. My bad. But I am hopeful that God uses small acts to grow his body together and prepares us to minister more significantly to each other when illness hits or marriages are shaken, etc.
There is a very loose group of people that eat together on Sunday nights. If you show up at 87 Fair St. in East Orange around 6:30 or 7pm, I’m sure you’ll find some admittedly broken people trying to be Jesus’ body to one another. You and others are welcome to come join the picnic, too.
May 20th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
I am not sure if my comments are appropriate or not but here goes. If they are not just consider them the ramblings of an old man. I agree hospitality is a way to build community. But it is not the only way. Working together can really create bonds. Some of my fondest memories at Lamb are of hard, difficult work I did with other people from the church. Something happens when you get through a difficult task together. There is a connection created that will always be there. I not just talking about manual labor like working on the church property, although that is a good one. There are all sorts of things. There was a group of us that went regularly to visit Junior when he was in Kessler. Some real bonds were created in the process of caring for the guy. People like Phyllis, Maura, my wife and myself connected as a result of visiting Junior. It was hard to be there and comfort him but we did it. In some ways this reminds me of dating. I believe one of the purposes of dating someone is to get to know them by doing things together. I may be dating myself here (no pun intended), but a guy thing when I was dating was to take your date to the fun house at the amusement park. (Do they have them anymore?) Anyway, if she gets really scared she will hold onto you and like you more. I always thought this was an urban myth but I am not so sure anymore. How many times do you hear of two people who survive a plane crash or some other frightening experience together and wind up married. It was the difficult event they went through together that bonded them. Now I am not suggesting we all crash in a plane together, or get shipwrecked together just to build community. What I am saying is hospitality is one way, working together is another. By the way we were all very touched by the broken and damaged bodies of patients at Kessler. Other patients near Junior would hear us talking to him and wanted us to talk to them. They are immobile, desperate and many without hope. Someone could have a ministry visiting paralyzed people at Kessler who don’t get many visitors. Do that with a group of people from church and I guarantee you will connect.