Quotes on Community
Following Jesus is communal, not individual.I hope that offering you a communal "pair of glasses" through which to read Scripture will help you see things you have missed - and spur you to break up with individualistic spiritual formation. I also hope you'll read The Kingdom of Couches to help give you a new paradigm for what Christian community could and should look like. Below are a few quotes from the book that relate to our interaction this morning at Coram Deo.
If we want missional community, we will have to decide that this world is not our home. We will have to repent of wanting our faith to be defined in terms of achievement and embrace the truth of what Jesus said - that our faith would be defined by our love for one another. Missional community begins with a deep conviction that living for ourselves - or even for a select few - is not satisfying, and that loving each other (as Jesus loves us) would be. This is the gospel. This is the only way to make sense of our being here on Earth. (p. 28)
Relationships with other people are at the core of your relationship with God. At the start, your community gave you a language with which to read and hear the gospel, and God used the experiences and conversations in your life to bring you to a point where you decided to give up your old life of sin and death for new life in Christ. As you mature in faith, community remains at the core. In conversation with other Christ-followers, in the reading and discussion of the Bible together, and in corporate prayer, you gain a more robust experience of God than you would ever have on your own. Multiple viewpoints tend to capture reality better.
Living a solitary life reflects a distorted reality. What's more, it rarely produces the tension that leads to life change. (p. 33)
What struck you the most this morning about our penchant for individualism and our avoidance of true, biblical community? Click the comment link below to post your thoughts.
posted by Bob | 3:40 PM
2 Comments:
I have a couple of comments. First, I completely agree that I myself am prone to see Jesus as more individual than communal, and that MOST, not all Christians are prone to the same error. But as you said Bob, you still can't neglect the individualistic relationship that we need to have with Jesus. I don't disagree with what you had to say Sunday morning except the phrase "Jesus is communal, not individual". Would it be better said "Jesus is communal, not just individual"?
But it is one thing to believe that we need to be more communal, and a whole other thing to actually BE communal. On Sunday afternoon my missional community experienced Jesus on that communal level, and in a way that I have to say I may have never experienced before. It was a group of 6 brothers and sisters being completely transparent with each other. I shared some things with my sisters in Christ that I never would've thought I would share. It was a time of tears, prayer, encouragement, brokenness, and unconditional love. I feel like I now understand what it means to "bear one another's burdens". I hope everyone in our community of Coram Deo experiences Jesus in this beautiful communal way.
Why is it such a monumental undertaking to be honest with each other about the things with which we struggle? Does it have to be as big a deal as it is?
Is the small group a surrogate confessor where we can be honest and open within it, yet continue as before within the church as a whole?
Is it possible to be like Frock's community churchwide? Can such openness move beyond the missional community? Is that desirable? What does that look like?
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