Tag: community groups

The Problem of Community

Posted on September 16, 2009

Yesterday I addressed the Problem of Community in America and the Church at the Acts 29 Bootcamp. About an hour before the talk, I scrapped a third of the talk and replaced it with some more practical stuff. The section I scrapped explores “The Problem of Community” as a result of our interpretation of Acts.

The Problem with Community Churches

One way to approach the problem of community is by focusing on community. Call it the Community-centered Approach. We plant community churches, start community groups, and preach community sermons. In an age of superficial social networking, pastors, church planters call us to deep church, strong social networking. And in search of the holy grail of community, we often quote and teach Acts 2:42-46, reminding our people that the NT church was a church that: “all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.” We want to be a NT church, do church and be church the way they did in the NT! We hold out a vision of biblical community, restructure our churches for community. But there are a few problems with this approach.

The first is Moral. The church just isn’t moral! We refuse this kind of community because it is inconvenient and costly. After all, we are consumers first and Christians second, right? When reading Acts, we do well to remember the Epistles! Do you really want to be a NT church? Corinthian back-biting, incest, drunkenness, gossip, worship of mega pastors/apostles, puffed up with theological knowledge, deflated on love…and oh, lying and deception. How do you build a community on that? The first problem with solving the problem of community with community is the community; it’s immorality. The second problem is Biblical. Biblical: yeah, the Biblical picture of community includes immorality. It includes sin! When reading Acts 2, we need to keep reading Acts. Remember Acts 5? Ananias and Sapphira, poster children for the early NT community, the Early Church. They lied to the Holy Spirit, the Apostles, and the church. They refused to live in community, and were struck dead on the spot! The second problem is that Biblical community doesn’t fit your vision of community. It is nowhere close to your holy grail of community. The third is Theological. NT churches we varied. There is no one NT church. There were city churches and there were house churches. Jewish churches and Greek churches. All kinds of variety. There isn’t a definitive biblical ecclesiology that solves the problem of community. There is no one method that will get you your Grail. Now, don’t get me wrong. Teach Acts 2, just don’t do it apart from Acts 5 and the Epistles. Don’t restrict your view of community to part of the NT, expand it to include all the NT!

The Cynical Approach to Community

So that is one approach to the problem of community, to solve it with community. Another approach is the cynical approach. I wont spend much time on this. But let’s just say that there are a lot of people in our churches, in America that are highly cynical of community in a church!  Why do you think they are running to the false refuge of FB and Twitter?! The cynic approaches community suspiciously. They’ve had their communal hopes dashed. This person has been hurt by relationships, burned by the church, and becomes the I-Believe-in-Jesus-not-the-Church person. Or they just seek community elsewhere. They’re so cynical about church, they satirize it calling it a religious institution, a political machine, MacChurch. But down in their heart is a flickering flame of hope. It occasionally dances out, looking for meaningful, honest, authentic relationships. True acceptance. See, the cynic still holds onto the ideal of community, or else they wouldn’t be so cynical, so critical of the church. They have a secret hope that the church could be something more. And here’s our hope. Every human is hard-wired for community, and even though we may idealize or satirize the church, approaching it all wrong, there’s still a longing. Deep down, for community, real community. So how do we get it? What’s the solution?

When Missional Communities Meet

Posted on March 20, 2009

What do your missional communities do when they aren’t on mission together? What do they discuss? How do you reinforce your values? How do you promote their discipleship alongside mission?

Story of Scripture with Soft Apologetic

When we started our  MCs, I wanted our people to become familiar with the big story of Scripture, engage non-Christians, and promote practical discussion, not theological debates or Bible studies. Inspired by The World We All Want, I wrote an 8 week discussion-driven material that begins with New Creation and ends with Mission. I chose to focus on different texts, simplify the approach, and provide a leaders supplement.

The first session starts with a question posed by Chester & Timmis: “If you ruled the world how would it look?” Starting each session with a soft apologetic engaged people across the spectrum of faith, while promoting an understanding of the whole story of Scripture. It keeps the unbeliever in mind while challenging the believer.

See Overview and Sample session.

Sermon Discussion

Once this foundation was laid, we began discussing sermons. Again, our approach was to keep it simple, discussion driven, gospel-centered, and missionally focused. We sensed a need to gather our church on the same theological and visionary page, to promote true gospel-centered living. So, each City Group leader gets five questions each week that move from a soft opener to the problem of application, to the solution of the gospel. All this after a meal together and lots of talking, laughing and so on.

This has been very successful. Our City Groups are starting to pastor one another by speaking the truth in love. We are experiencing some substantial gospel change, but it takes a while for people to a) Trust one Another b) Confess and Repent c) Counsel one Another d) Understand How the Gospel Applies not just saves.

What have you found helpful in promoting gospel-centeredness, community, discipleship within your missional communities?

New Pilot City Group

We are considering starting a pilot City Group that runs 6-8 weeks for non-Christians to get exposed to Gospel, Community, and Mission. Kind of like a short-term Alpha Course that is missional and apologetic. Anyone else done anything like this?

Toward Steady State Community

Posted on November 5, 2008

Our church is trying to shake sinful individualism and move into steady state communities. We are having some success and some failure. The success is very life-giving, exciting, church-like. I ran across this quote by Dallas Willard that gets at our aim in cultivating steady state community:

Among those who live as Jesus’ apprentices there are no relationship that omit the presence and action of Jesus. We never go “one on one;” all relationships are mediated through him. I never think simply of what I am going to do with you, to you, or for you. I think of what we, Jesus and I, are going to do with you, to you, and for you. Likewise, I never think of what you are going to do with me, to me, and for me, but of what will be done by you and Jesus with me, to me, and for me. – The Divine Conspiracy, 236

If we would think of ourselves less as individuals and more as persons in community, our decision-making and discipleship would change radically. It has been said there is no pure individual. Its’s true. No man an island to himself. We all possess the seed of community, but supress or substitute it for other things. Solitary experiences and virtual forms of community, no matter how wonderful, do not sum up or satisfy our social identity as persons-in-community. The Triune God saw to that when he made us. If the American church could recover that social identity and harness it to gospel-centered mission, the world would be a very different place.

Fortunately, failure in Christian community points us back to the sufficiency of the Jesus. Our success reminds us that the Spirit of Jesus is powerful and counter-cultural. Jesus is strong for our successes and sufficient for our failure in striving for steady state community and gospel-centered mission.

Communities of Performance or Grace?

Posted on November 3, 2008

Tim Chester offers a great diagnostic list to determine whether our communities are communities of performance or grace:

Communities of Performance Communities of Grace
the leaders appear sorted the leaders are vulnerable
the community appears respectable the community is messy
meetings must be a polished performance meetings are just one part of community life
identity is found in ministry identity is found in Christ
failure is devastating failure is disappointing, but not devastating
actions are driven by duty actions are driven by joy
conflict is suppressed or ignored conflict is addressed in the open
the focus is on orthodoxy and behaviour (allowing people to think they’re sorted) the focus is on the affections of the heart (with a strong view of sin and grace)