What to do if people don't want community?
By Jonathan Dodson | February 10th, 2009 | Category: Missional Church | 6 commentsWhat do we do if people in our church don’t want to be the church? How do we encourage people to enter into Christian community?
1. Preach, teach, disciple, and counsel a strong gospel of grace that is community focused. Demonstrate the centrality of one anothering, hospitality, and fellowship from the Bible, while also consistently deconstructing defective notions of church. Constantly expose sub/un-biblical notions of church. You can do this in any kind of church gathering.
2. Show them what they are missing by integrating a testimony time into your public gatherings. We have a City Group spotlight every other Sunday during which people share something from their experience of Gospel, Community, or Mission in their City Group.
3. Make it an issue of obedience and an issue of grace. Demonstrate from the Scriptures that community is something commanded by Christ. Explain what community is and what it isn’t. Illustrate community of grace stories and community of legalism and convenience stories.
Extend grace to people who have been terribly discipled into thinking that church is optional. Re-disciple them in the gospel by uncovering heart issues/idolatries of “fear of man”, selfishness, hidden sins, and so on.
4. Create “stepping stones” for genuine community through things like intro class, social events, partner’s class, post-gathering lunches, etc. In a culture like ours, churches don’t have instant credibility. We need to create ways for people to know us, evaluate us, and question us.
5. Some people just need an invitation. Some folks would never show up to someone’s home uninvited, but once they are invited community becomes more natural. Invite others into your home and into community.
This is good. If everyone is expecting community, then no one is actively engaged in working towards actually building community. It is helpful to have people actively steering the church toward community. Your suggestions are really helpful. My wife and I try to do our part with no. 5, inviting people into our home instead of going out for dinner, and just generally making it clear that our door is always open.
Thanks for this Jonathan. This is very helpful.
We are in the process of moving towards church being community throughout the week as opposed to simply being a Sunday event. As I preached through a series on Gospel, Community and Mission I found people are not really resistant (at least in theory) to the idea of community and from the few sermons and studies we have done it certainly is very clear in Scripture that community is a direct outworking of the Gospel. Being in South Africa we are also convinced that our communities need to reflect the diverse reconciled community that Ephesians 2 speaks about.
However, here is my struggle. Although people like the idea of community, they seem to resist the idea of their primary community being with the church. So for example, this was one comment I received: “While agreeing we need to be more of a community, our interaction and witness takes place in a much bigger circle than the church community important as this is.” I understand what he is saying, and yet it reflects the fact that people feel they are already in networks of relationships and have their own communities and so feel the idea of encouraging church community to be rather forced and time-consuming and may result in the neglect of or their withdrawal from their other communities / network of relationships.
I’ve battled to figure out how to respond to this. My thought thus far is that it becomes a question of mission and not just community. Community in the church is crucial if we are to be effective in mission together.
Is this a struggle you have faced, and if so, how have you responded?
Hi Paul,
It’s funny, I just had a similar email exchange with another pastor over this issue. People believe in community with their head but their actions so often don’t follow. If we are going to be good pastors, I think it’s important that we diagnose resistance to community accurately. You know your people and context best, and I love your Eph 2 emphasis. Andrew Walls calls this the Ephesians Moment, when the full, diverse stature of Christ is completed through mission. So back to the issue, here are some questions:
1. What are those alternate primary community structures?
2. What is at the center of those communities? Hobbies, Vocation, Family, or Christ?
3. What sets Christian community apart from other community?
4. If they are XN communities that are Christ-centered (not cliques), can you help shape community life in your local church around these communities?
I think it is important to make a distinction between friendship and community. Friendship is elective, preferential, affinity-based relationships. Community is non-elective, diverse, gospel-based relationships with people that are very different from us (people we need most).
There is a larger circle of XN community–the scattered church–however, church is also a gathering of the saints for speaking the truth in love, bearing one another’s burdens, and worshipping together. These things fuel Christ-centered mission.
Hope this helps some. let me know if i missed your question.
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Hi Jonathan
Thanks for your comment. I think you are spot on. I guess that is what has bugged me – a lot of the ‘communities’ that people are part of are not primarily Gospel-driven. They may consist mainly of Christians, but they exist for themselves. One could try to move these communities to being intentionally Christ-centred, but more often than not I think they will end up just tacking Jesus on as opposed to allowing Him to drive the purpose and mission of the community. On the other hand, a community of diverse people that exists because of and for the Gospel is by its very nature Christ-centred / Gospel driven. And, being a diverse group of people that are truly learning to love each other, such communities will automatically look very different to the ‘communities’ that exist in the world and will therefore undoubtedly raise questions in people’s minds. In other words, there is a greater chance of them having a missional DNA.
[...] February 22, 2009 Great Advice on Christian Community Posted by Dan Ghramm under General Posts | Tags: christian community, church, discipleship | via Church Planting Novice [...]