Community

Community

When you see that word up there... yep that one, what comes to mind? This is a question we usually ask at the beginning of a Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills workshop. We can have quite a good discussion around that word and the ideas that it fosters.

There are so many elements that can come into play when we start to think about community: the people involved; the purpose or mission; the parameters or boundaries that keep people in or out; the rules & regulations that govern the community and even the motivation that forms the community in the first place. Besides these major issues that I have listed there are many other thoughts and details that come out in each discussion we have. The fun thing is that while we are defining and becoming more intentionally aware of community we are also starting to form our own community which will last through the week-long workshop.

We have been in a number of discussion lately about community and one issue that sometimes gets overlooked for a while when we theorize about community, but is always one of the main issues in real life: the problems that exist between the people involved! Whether it is a family, a mission, a company, and yes even a church, there are almost always problems, difficulties, frustrations, grievances, grudges, troubles and tribulations! Of course I mean with the other people, not you.... Right, you get the picture!

A friend in ministry tells us that his family is trying to get him “home” from the mission field with the threat that he will be taken out of the parent’s will if he doesn’t. Other friends have shared with us their private struggles with close family and friends, and how it affects their ministry and lives. Another acquaintance tells of how frustrating it is to be in a ministry where the leadership doesn’t seem to have any passion for reaching people for Christ, but only seems concerned about finances, procedures and rules. A pastor shares with us that a number of key leaders in their church are at odds, and he is being caught in the middle. A classmate lets out that she has been deeply wounded by others in her previous church and now cannot commit to staying involved in any given church for very long because she knows that she will get hurt again if she does. The list could go on, and we guess that you too could put together a similar list from your own interactions with others.

As we all know in any community situation we can usually find ourselves choosing to ignore the problems, isolate ourselves from them as much as possible, or simply fight on. (Hopefully that doesn’t become a literal fight!) On occasion we choose to take the extreme measure of removing ourselves from the community hoping that the next community we join will be better, or like our classmate, not joining another community to avoid the certainty of more pain.

Jesus said that the world around us would know that we are His disciples by the way we love one another and treat each member in our community. Is it possible that we have gotten something wrong in the way we live this out? We can easily accept that we cannot save ourselves in the first place. We can agree with the statement that Jesus Christ made that He is the Way, the Truth and the ife, and that no one can come to the Father except through Him. We know that there is no salvation except by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. I wonder if we take as seriously Jesus’ statement that He is the vine and we are the branches and that we can not bear fruit on our own – that in fact we can do absolutely nothing unless it is His life flowing through us that does it. Would it impact our communities if we focused more on being totally connected with Christ; being filled with His Spirit; and being in constant communication with the Father? It seems simplistic to think that all our interpersonal problems in community would be solved if we got these priorities right, but it seems to us that this is what the Word says will start to happen.

It would be really neat to try, wouldn’t it?