Unpacking Community (Part 3)
The Finally Practical Bonds and Expressions
The Context of the Gospel
A generation before Christ, the Roman Empire was in chaos. Mark Antony ruled the east, and Octavian ruled the west part of the empire. To broker peace during rising tensions, Antony married Octavian’s half sister Octavia.
As tensions continued to grow, Octavia found herself caught in the middle. She described herself as the happiest of women, probably from her good marriage with Antony. She begged her brother not to go to war with her husband, as she would then become unbelievably unhappy. Her brother didn’t listen and went to war anyway. When forced to pick sides, Octavia left her husband and returned to her brother, Octavian. Her bond with her brother was greater than that with her husband.
In the ancient world of the New Testament, the bond of siblings was one the deepest bonds that existed, deeper than even the marriage union. It is no accident that the New Testament uses the language of the sibling bond (i.e., brother) to explain church relationships. In other words, a church community is bonded by the deepest bonds that exist.
The Expression of Community
The previous post outlined how the love within the Trinity is the foundation for our communities. This post will talk about expressions of the brother-bond in community, using the above diagram as a model. While this model is not intended to encapsulate truth, its goal is to simplify and illustrate the truths of community.
Most importantly, love must center and ground community. This love can be expressed as worship to God, sharing with people inside our community, and serving those outside our community. The double-headed arrows illustrate how each expression of community informs and influences the other.
Worshiping
Worship for Him must ground all other parts of community. This worship, rooted in love for God, is expressed in the heart, emotions, mind, and strength. Worship involves the heart—a turning of the will to God, a commitment to Him through difficulty, and an embrace of spiritual disciplines even when it doesn’t feel good. But true worship should move beyond ritual; it should provide a deep experience of God’s heart and presence in our emotions.
While worship is a mystical [1] experience of the heart and emotions, it should also include the active components of the mind and strength. We can engage our minds in worship by thinking right thoughts about God and studying His character through Scriptures, the creation, and life experiences. And in all parts of community, we can worship God with our strength by doing everything to the best of our ability.
Interestingly, each of these parts of worship is also a fundamental part of community. In a healthy community, members should commit deeply, feel love for each other, think through things together, and do life together to the best of their ability. These communal actions are not only parts of worship; they are worship itself.
Community is not an end in itself—God is the end we are seeking. While worship precedes and undergirds community, community will someday culminate in worship. Someday, we will throng around the throne of God and lift our voices in the most diverse yet united song ever to exist in the history of the cosmos.
Sharing
I cannot think of a single word to encapsulate our expressions of community within our group. For the sake of simplicity, I have chosen the word sharing. In a healthy community, we are not just a group of spiritual individuals that meet to encourage each other; rather, we make up a spiritual body together. This means that we share our spirituality with each other—we pray, weep, suffer, and worship as one body. We stand side by side in the spiritual war, protecting and fighting for each together. We consider another’s failures and victories as are our own.
When I think of sharing, talk quickly comes to mind. Words are one of the most powerful things we can share because verbal communication is rooted in God Himself. The Greek word for word is Logos, the eternal Word of God who spoke the worlds into existence. When we speak life into others, we are fulfilling our God-given image. In our broken world, however, the powers of darkness have turned words into destruction. Words have split churches, driven people to suicide, and started wars. But we can also use words in our fight against darkness. When we speak words that heal relationships, provide hope, and inject peace into conflicts, we are waging war against the one who has come to steal and destroy.
Sharing also involves our hearts. In a healthy community, we become vulnerable with each other, bare our hearts, and show who we really are. Then, we accept each other no matter what they have or haven’t shared (Romans 15:7). Like God, we are more concerned about the direction people are heading than the position they are in.
As a note of caution, some communities are too toxic and judgmental to be vulnerable with each other. In these places, vulnerable people are ignored, rejected, or even attacked. There is no obligation to be vulnerable in such situations. Even Jesus said not to give your treasures to pigs in case they trample them and turn and attack you (Matthew 7:6). If you find yourself part of a toxic community, you should look for a new or alternate community to support you.
As mentioned in Part 1, community also involves sharing of resources. When there is a need, community members distribute their surplus money, possessions, time, and energy. The Amish are a good example of this in times of catastrophe. When one family’s barn burns down, the other community members rally and help rebuild. In my limited experience, however, I have not seen good examples of people that practice distribution of resources in normal everyday ways. The only two historical examples of healthy, everyday distribution that come to my mind are the early church and the early Hutterites. [2]
Sharing is hard to practice in today’s world. The internal combustion engine has driven us apart, and the industrial revolution has tied our trust and loyalty to our work ethic rather than each other. While I see value in living close together and rethinking the way we view work, I also think that these are externals and are not the place to start building community. Rather, I think we should start deepening our love for God and each other. Then our distribution will be natural rather than stilted. When we truly love each other, when our hearts are knit together, we will want to share with our brothers and sisters.
Serving
When I think of how we express community outside our small group, I think of service. This does not mean we only serve those outside our community, nor does it mean that we only share with those inside our community. Rather, it means that the more distanced someone is from our community, the more we try to reach them by service rather than sharing our hearts.
Service should be not an act of duty but an expression of love. Servants are ready to help their neighbors when they see needs. Does this mean that we should try to meet every need we see? Who is our neighbor that we are commanded to love?
Someone once asked Jesus this question, and Jesus never really answered. Instead, he told a story about showing love to someone in need. Then He said, “Go and do the same” (Luke 10:37 CSB). In other words, don’t ask who our neighbor is; rather, do our best to help needs right in front of us.
I believe we should meet physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs. I reject a gospel that says we must only preach the gospel and not serve the physical needs of the world. I reject the Platonic belief that says we are only souls imprisoned in the body. Rather, I believe in a gospel that incarnates [3] itself in believers, a gospel expressed in love and service. I believe that the body is created good by God, that it will someday be redeemed in the resurrection, and that we are serving Jesus when we serve bodily needs.
We can serve physical needs by feeding the hungry, providing shelter to the homeless, and visiting the sick, imprisoned, and lonely. We can serve others intellectually by teaching and educating them. I especially think of those who provide classes to immigrants and refugees. We can serve emotionally by honoring people’s stories, listening to them, coaching them, and connecting them with additional resources. Most importantly, if we have incarnated the good news of Jesus, we are then prepared to share about Jesus with our words and meet others’ spiritual needs.
Three Shortcomings
Following are three potential communal shortcomings based on the above model. While this list is not comprehensive, it includes some of the issues I see in Lancaster County, where I hail from.
Serving without worshiping: Naturally, we want to do things that provide immediate results. If we focus our community building on serving others, we can quickly do things that show results. We can start programs to visit those in prison, feed the homeless, or teach classes. While I think these things are important, I also believe we should begin our efforts by falling on our faces. We should ask God how He wants us to build community and which opportunities we should pursue. Only when we have spent time with God will we be truly equipped to serve others.
Serving without sharing: Some of us take time for our daily devotions but are too busy to just sit and talk with each other. In the spiritual “hustle culture,” when someone becomes “more spiritual,” they often focus on doing more and more. Sometimes they forget to just sit, talk, and be with each other. I believe that until we focus more on being with each other, we are in danger of bolstering a culture of burnout and isolation.
Giving but not receiving: Some of are quick to give but slow to receive. We want to share resources with others but provide our own needs by ourselves. Maybe this is because we find our identity in serving (i.e., works) rather than receiving God’s grace as His sons and daughters. Maybe it is because we feel good about taking time to give but think it is a waste of time to receive from others. No matter the reason, I believe that this tendency is usually rooted in pride and selfishness, even when it is cloaked as passionate spirituality.
The Biblical Progression
I intentionally laid out worshiping, sharing, and serving in that order. While I believe these are all practiced simultaneously, I also believe that they are a spiritual progression. All spiritual efforts must be grounded in worship. We must spend much time praying, worshiping, and delighting God’s presence before we can deeply share with our community. And only when we receive God’s love for us and share it with our brothers and sisters will we be equipped to extend this love to others. If we center our communities in acceptance of God’s love, our love for each other will become evident. Then, as we serve the world, they understand that we are Jesus’ disciples by our love for each other (John 13:35).
[1] By mystical, I am not referring to Buddhism or other forms of eastern mysticism. Rather, I am referring to an experience that transcends both the senses and the intellect.
[2] I have not included the modern-day Hutterites because I am not sure that all their communities are healthy. I wonder if community for some of them has become more of a ritual than an expression of love for each other.
[3] In the Incarnation, the Word (Logos) of God became flesh. When we live out the Scriptures, the word of God is once again “becoming flesh,” being fleshed out in our lives.
That is a very inspirational read this Monday morning. Thanks.