During my involvement in the high school ministry at my church I have noticed that one of the hardest things to do is to foster a sense of unity and community within my friends and the youth group. This is often very discouraging for me because it seems like there is such an emphasis on unity among believers in the scriptures. The New Testament is full of imagery of how the community of believers should be like a body, working together with different functions but the same purpose. Scripture also discusses the need for openness and honesty within the church. For example, James says “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (5:16). Such honesty among believers helps to form a body that is functioning as God intends. Unfortunately it’s not easy within today’s culture of busyness and individualism to have this. These two ideas coincide to make community a very difficult thing to obtain. Instead of facing our problems, we often fill our lives with so much noise that we can ignore them. We get so busy doing things that we don’t have time to get real with ourselves. The idea of individualism in our culture also makes community seem foreign. In Jesus’ time believers participated in life together. They were almost like a family; they ate together and looked out for each other. While it wouldn’t be reasonable to say that we should live like 1st century Jews, it isn’t impractical to apply some of their communal habits into our lives today. Another problem that often stifles community is when we take the easy road when it comes to our issues and frustrations. It is way easier to keep anything that will make you look weak or immature inside and just put on a mask of perfection than it is to be transparent with those that are close to you in your life.
In order to get real with ourselves and create a more united body of believers I feel we need to declutter our lives. We need to stop filling our days with so much peripheral stuff that we lose what should be our primary focus, the gospel of Christ. Centering back on the good news of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf will show us we don’t need these masks anymore. When Christ is the focus, we become as Steve Brown says “beggars telling other beggars where we found bread.” In other words we don’t feel the need to puff up ourselves with masks and false images. We instead can be real with each other and encourage each other to keep pursuing Christ on a daily basis. What do you think?
Jonny
I agree Jon. I have the same problem with trying to not find excuses to take time with people. For me community is just a word now and has no really sustenance. Shouldn't we as Christians thrive off of our love for Christ and our need to commune with fellow believers? Sometimes I think that all we need is just a few more minutes a day with just us and God; stop the work, school and social life for a minute and pray. Like you said, once we center ourselves with God we be true with our friends and start to get back to real meaning of the body of Christ and stop the shrewd excuse of a body I feel like we're calling ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the post... it's good to see you and tom finally blogging... it's about time.
ReplyDeleteI love it dudes! Keep writing.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, my friend. And you bring up a good point, when it comes to community. I feel that too often we come into a church setting as a group of individuals, and leave as a group individuals, neither encouraged by our brothers by hearing the testimonies of the workings of God, nor challenged by our brothers to follow harder after Christ. It's a sad day in the life of the church when our focus becomes going unnoticed, unchallenged, and unbothered by the Word of God and the true love that should from the church body.
ReplyDeleteGood thoughts, and I look forward to future posts.
I like it. But to pose another question to you how do you feel we simplify our lives? How do we remove the distractions? That seems to me to be what Steve Brown is talking about in his quote. Beggars are only focused on getting from one meal to the next meal, so bread is all that is important to them. God should be ALL that is important to us, but what do we do about the creature comforts that have infiltrated every aspect of our society. Good Job and keep the blogs coming.
ReplyDeleteGod Himself exists in community - we can see that in the Trinity. Genesis also tells us that we are Male and Female because it was not good for Adam to be alone. This all brings to mind a question: Why would a young man leave the solid community where he already makes a vital difference, just to attend a slightly larger University with a better football team? Why? It certainly has nothing to do with a degree program since the local University which is practically the same size also offers those degree programs. Why would this hypothetical young man leave a community where he could play a major role in a University ministry that is already making an impact on this generation and would certainly make a larger impact with this "hypothetical" young man's involvement. This young man would also gain more experience for future ministry were he to stay put in his current community - hypothetically speaking...of course.
ReplyDeleteI have a question to ask with regard to community: how does the way we structure worship gatherings hamper or help the individualism we want to avoid?
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