OUR VISION OF THE CHURCH: THE TRUE COMMUNITY
1. Why oh why the church? Why do you love the church??
2. Ever walked into room full of people you don't know all that well and everyone is in a little group dotted around the room, perhaps waiting for the meeting or the event to start.
Those groups don't look open
And you feel immediately conspicuous, like everyone is watching you.
Out of their peripheral vision.
Everyone is on edge wondering how you will resolve this tension.
So you try to look nonchalant.
You go up and read the noticeboard or what's on the table, or
Wait for it, you take out your cellphone
and pretend to txt someone. Anyone! So you don't feel like an entire loser.
Or failing that you just sit down by yourself and wait.
3. Or you walk into a room, not knowing anyone that well, clinging to the few you do.
But others come up to you then and later and initiate a conversation. And it happens again next time.
And you realize that this group is not a bunch of small groups and cliques, but one group
And everyone belongs to it.
Even you.
And you become drawn in to its life.
Now it's your turn.
4. Which one is the church like?
I realize as I've sweated over this message,
this remarkable organism called the church and what it means to be community
how little I know.
How challenged I have been about my own ability to be in community and to create it.
Welcome and inclusion and encouragement,
Not my second nature.
I have to learn how to do it.
I need to learn how to be the church.
How to let down my walls and defenses and get over my hurts and offenses.
Will you come with me, with Richard and me on this journey to building God's community here and in Leith valley?
5. I need people. Do you?
Edward Hallowell Harvard Medical School, speaks for the basic human need for community . He uses the term connection.
The sense of being part of something matters, something larger than ourselves. We need face to face interactions; to be seen and known and served and do these same things for others. We need to bind ourselves to others with promises of loyalty and love made and kept.
On my deepest level I want to be known
and to be loved
and to feel as though I have significance to a bunch of people
and I want to know and love and give respect
and work with others in something significant.
I have this God shaped hole and a human shaped hole that drives me to connect.
God made Adam but it was not good that he was alone.
Humans need company, this drives us on a deep level.
Even though much of the time I haven't identified it as such.
It happens on an emotional level, happens on a spiritual level,
happens so deeply I'm not even aware of it.
The first time in my conscious memory that I really experienced a taste of what a deeper connection was like, was at a Christian camp and I was 15.
The experience of being cared for broke in through what was a whole lot of walls that I had been erecting around myself for some time.
And it changed me at the core level.
It didn't make everything better as I discovered through life
But it gave me a hope and a passion and a glimpse which I have clung on to ever since.
And I have basically given my life to that end,
To creating environments where the power of the love of God is able to be experienced
What I am coming to see is true community
I so want the church to be a place where we can bring anyone and know
that they will find a genuine welcome,
and know that what they hear is relevant and real to their lives,
and know that what they feel is the love of God being dynamically and powerfully experienced through the relationships they encounter
and know they are part of something authentic, attractive, real, dynamic, potent, whole and with an eternal dimension.
Jesus said: By this will everyone know you are my disciples; if you have love for each other.
My fire and passion is aroused for the church for what I believe it can be and what God longs for it to be.
I give my life's work to supporting the church as this amazing organism that for some reason Jesus is so passionately in love with.
6. Why is that?
My greatest picture I have of God is that of God-in-community
And from this comes my model of leadership.
It has everything to do with this Gk word: koinonia.
Which means communion, fellowship, sharing in, partaking of, having all things in common.
Let me make two points about the community
- 1. God for us and with us
- 2. God in us and through us
1. Community is rooted in the very being of God.
The life of God is a life of self giving and other receiving love.
This is perichoresis, related to our word choreography;
the Trinity exists as a dance of joyful love among Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is mutual, interdependent, safe, healthy , equal, each has a interactive role.
God-in-community
It's round, not hierarchical. ( this is where my vision of leadership comes from)
The relationship is so close that Jesus could say: the Father is in me and I am in the Father.
THE MOST MINDBLOWING THING IS: We are invited into this community.
The circle opens up.
God said: Let us make humans in our image. He gave us the capacity for relationships …with Godself and with other humans
God wanted the opportunity to have community with other.
This is the most incredible thing.
God made room for us in his community.
God welcomed us into the life which was self sufficient.
To make this possible the Trinity allowed itself to be vulnerable.
- Jesus shared (koinonia) our flesh Heb 2: 10-14
- And he invited us in, welcomed us into the family : into this fellowship of love,
- Jesus prayed: May they also be in us
John 17:20-24
20 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:
23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
When Jesus prays for us to be invited into the circle, it is not a casual request.
The Son will go to the cross. The Father will see the Son suffer
The spirit will come to earth and allow himself to be quenched and grieved by human beings.
At enormous cost we are welcomed into the eternal circle.
Get this language: We are taken into the circle.
- 1 Cor 10:16 Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation (koinonia) in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation (koinonia) in the body of Christ?
- 1 Peter 1:3 he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate ( koinonia) in the divine nature.
- And our fellowship (koinonia) is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3-7
What is at the heart of the Gospel? It is covenant.
A relationship with God brought about by his grace.
God opening the doors of his community to let us in.
Welcoming us with open and outstretched arms, running towards us with passionate love.
Twisting and twirling over us with joy and singing.
God wants our hearts to be his, he wants to establish his love in our hearts and his kingdom through us.
It's out of this context that we the church are born, that community can exist
God in us and through us.
I wonder what God's dream community might look like?
Dallas Willard says: God's aim in human history is the creation of an inclusive community of loving persons, with himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.
Maybe like something before the entry of sin.
NO fighting, no tears, no pain, wholeness, health, satisfaction and peace. The Kingdom of Heaven.
So how can we be the true community now in relationship to others?
The connection that takes place between a mother and a child is perhaps the clearest picture in our world of the human moment. It creates a little circle of life. A mother ceases to think about herself and focuses on her child;
she gives love and warmth and blessing and the child receives life and at the same moment she receives the joy of giving in love and she too is given life.
The human moment reflects a kind of relational ecosystem in which life becomes greater and richer as it flows back and forth from one person to another.
Larry Crabb calls this process 'connecting'.
When two people connect, when their beings intersect as closely as two bodies during intercourse, something is poured out of one and into the other that has the power to heal the soul of its deepest wounds and restore it to health. The one who receives experiences the joy of being healed. The one who gives knows the even greater joy of being used to heal. Something good is in the heart of each of God's children that is more powerful than everything bad. It's there waiting to be released, work its magic.'
The love of God pours into our hearts. The love of God pours out through us.
The work of building community is the noblest work a person can do.
The really significant achievement is that which enriches the life of community.
But every merely human circle of life is broken. NO human circle of life is truly sufficient.
Dallas Willard: Ultimately, every human circle is doomed to dissolution if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self sufficient circle of sufficiency, that of the trinity. For that circle is the only one that is truly and totally self sufficient. And all the broken circles must ultimately find their healing there. "
And that's the rub, God made us with such capacity for relationship and also the possibility of stuffing up!!
Adam was alone and it was not good. He needed a woman!! We need each other!
The Holy Spirit creates the conditions for true community to happen between humans, coming directly out of the life of God. So if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship (koinonia) with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.1 John 1: 7
- 2 Cor 13:14 the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all
It calls us to unity, to love…
- Phil 2: 1-4 if any fellowship of the spirit… be of the same mind, have the same love.
To gather in his name means to relate to other people in the same spirit of servanthood and submission and delight that characterizes the trinity.
Whenever that happens Jesus says he can't just stand idly by. He's there cheering it on.
This is why the experience of authentic community is lifegiving.
When in community I can experience fullness of heart. , heart comes alive in community.
To experience community is to know the joy of belonging, the delight at being known and loved, the opportunity for giving and growing, the safety of finding a true home.
"A spiritual community consists of people who have the integrity to come clean. It is comprised of those who own their shortcomings and failures because they hate them more than they hate the shortcomings a failures of others,
who therefore discover that a well of pure water flows beneath their most fetid corruption."
Dr Larry Crabb. The Safest Place on Earth.
Every time you forgive someone, you encourage, extend mercy and compassion, confront someone in love, open your heart to a friend, love an enemy , devote time , you align yourself to God's central purpose in the world.
God's dream community
Our churches, we have the capacity for this if we will commit to working out how to be a part of Jesus undying love for the church, the bride for whom he died and is now tending to, to make her spotless and complete.
Join with us