Reggie Weems

For at least two months, Heritage is talking about community at Heritage both in our community groups and from the pulpit.  We’re learning that community is a God-ordained and created environment in which He intends for His church to live, grow and experience great blessings.  But there are difficulties.  All this week we’re going to look at the various dangers, toils and snares we must pass to enjoy the benefits of community.  At the end of the series on Community’s Challenges, I’ll list all of my resources for these articles.   

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”  Eugene Peterson wrote in TableTalk that ” One of the immediate changes that the gospel makes is grammatical; we instead of I; our instead of my; us instead of me.” 

Whatever God loves, Satan despises.  Since community is such a wonderful gift from God, we may expect that community is certainly a target of Satan.  Community has its specific challenges.  To gain and maintain community will require that we develop a theology of community which is what we’re trying to do in CG’s and the pulpit all during this series.  It will also necessitate a clear and concise definition of community and an intentional strategy to create community (something Jim is attempting to do as he coaches our CG leaders).  As well, we need to understand the natural barriers that exist to keep community from being all God intended it to be for His church.  That’s the subject of today’s blog.    

Community is powerful because it reflects the very nature of God Himself.  It’s valuable because community is God’s divine design for every believer.  In the foreword to The Connecting Church, Larry Crabb writes, “Community matters.  That’s about like saying oxygen matters.  As our lungs require air, so our souls require what only community provides.  Without it, we die.” (Frazee, 13).  God’s omniscience allows Him to know what’s best for His body.  His omnipotence gives Him the ability to create what He deems best.  Thus, for God to design and desire community for His church really answers the question about its value, importance and benefit.   
The church needs to place the same worth on community as God does.  Community isn’t something we create.  It already exists through the cross.  Community is really a call to sincerely and authentically embrace what God created and to commit our lives to maintaining and deepening that embrace whatever the cost.  For community to exist as God envisioned it in our creation, the cooperation of every believer will be required to fulfill God’s plan.  Jim Holland writes that in community we learn that “we need other people.  We learn that one of the deepest longings we have is to know others and to be known by them.  But we also learn that there is a price to be paid for this grace – the death of our autonomy, a limit to keeping our options open, and the realization that we cannot have our own way” (From TableTalk, November 1999). Paul alludes to this in Ephesians 4, as he describes, “the whole body, joined and held together by every supportive ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”  No less than all we are and have will be necessary to create what is supposed to be a viable community for Christians and a visible witness to the world.  As such, community is essential to the well being of the church and the advancement of the gospel.  But creating community will be a counter-cultural revolution for the modern society in which we live.  Community life is hard because of the resident sin nature that exists within redeemed people.  It’s also complicated because of the societal context in which community exists.  Ours is an age must like Israel in the book of Judges when every person chose a way of life that seemed best to them and every way of life was separate but equal (Judges 21:25).       

God foresaw believers united in a community of mutual encouragement, blessing, healing and powerful evangelism.  The church would provide the world a model of what life could be like if every human being willingly submitted themselves to the Head and the body.  His expectation was no less than the community enjoyed by the Trinity (John 17:11, 20-22).  Ultimately, eternity will prove God’s ability to bring such a community into being with Himself.  Conversely, a divided community would be weakened before the devil’s onslaught of evil and could become the laughingstock of the world.  Thus, community’s value is also evidenced in the degree of difficulty required to create and sustain such a fellowship of believers in the midst of a world that is counter in thought and deed to God’s plan.

More on Monday…
 

An informed understanding of Christian historical theology serves to offer direction for the modern church which is often lacking an anchor in the turbulent times of shifting denominational lines and doctrinal uncertainty.  In general, the average church member is grossly confused about the difference between humility and conviction.  Any type of pronounced, public religious conviction that defines truth is often met with cries of arrogance from a world that denies an absolute of anything. 

Desiring to be clothed in sincere humility the church often responds with an uncertain message absent of any conviction regarding doctrinal integrity and ultimate truth.  G. K. Chesterton once remarked about his own era that “a man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not doubt – the Divine Reason…We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”[1]   Chesterton warned Christians that any person of faith should never confuse arrogance with conviction or uncertainty with humility.  It is not humble to be uncertain and it is not arrogant to be a person, church or denomination of conviction.   

It is true that no single being or collective humanity for that matter, knows everything.  But there are some things we do know by divine revelation.  There are some things God intends for us to know with certainty.  Christians have a responsibility to humbly yet readily and courageously acknowledge what we do know.  Truth is intended to save the world from itself.  We should know what God wants us to know with humility because we understand that knowledge is a gift from God.  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding” (Psalm 111:10).  It is God Who has given us minds with which to love Him (Deuteronomy 6:5).  In grace God has sovereignly chosen to reveal His infinite Self to finite humanity.  We do not perfectly understand our perfect God but we must acknowledge that we do know what God wants us to understand; else it can be perceived that God’s revelation, not mankind’s ability to understand, is lacking in efficacy.  In other words, if God is God, He should be able to (and is able to) effectively communicate His truth to His creation.   

On the other hand, Paul wrote to Timothy encouraging him to “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (II Timothy 2:7).  The apostle recognized that learning was a gift from God to be received with humility but equally dependent on human effort.  Thus we should also acknowledge the truth with confidence since Christians are commanded to speak the truth as an essential aspect of living in relationship with others (Ephesians 4:25).  What we should know by divine revelation we can know.  What we can know we ought to know. What we ought to know we should know by human effort and reasoning, all of which, knowledge, effort and reasoning, are gifts of God.   

In a world where ‘truthiness’ has replaced truth, where light is confused with darkness and in which the platform of certitude has sunk into an abyss of uncertainty it is all the more imperative that we both know the truth and pronounce its value and advantages.  In that vein, historical Christian theology reminds Christians of the modern era about what has been historically invaluable to Christians in the past.  In turn, the past has created what was once future and is now the present in which we learn and live out doctrinal truth.  Christians are Christians for a reason.  Such historical reflection offers a platform for the contemplation and discussion of issues that are critical to Christian thought and life throughout its history and even into the present day. 

What do Christians believe that is distinctive from other religions?  A part if that answer is discovered when one recalls that Christianity did not originate in a vacuum.  Only when the full weight of the circumstances surrounding its genesis and the persecution levied against that small initial band of Christ-followers is felt by the Christian church of the 21^st century will modern believers appreciate and laud the historic value of their own heritage. 

The doctrines of grace that gave birth to a 17^th century renaissance within the sound of the Reformation’s 16^th century echo can create light and heat for modern era churches and individuals alike.  This will lead to a personal passionate pursuit and public promotion of those inaugural dynamic truths that served to create the identity of the original Protestants.  These beliefs were so self-evident that men and women died for them rather than repudiate what they humbly knew to be certain truth that had irrevocably changed their lives and their eternal destinies. 

The facts of Christian history and its theology can be known and the distinctives of Christian thought and practice can be appreciated without minimizing the thought and practice of those who choose not to believe or to believe differently.  There is certainly something to believe.  God has something to say; hence the Bible.  It behooves us then to know what God has said and to apply it to our own lives and pray its blessings on those we love.  “For the wise men of old,” C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, “the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline and virtue.”  The knowledge of God always leads to self-discipline which creates virtue in individuals and societies.  To know these things imparts humility to those who come behind such stalwarts of the faith.  It also generates the conviction that Christian distinctives should be remembered and esteemed.  Such renewed knowledge can only lead to personal piety and public reformation five centuries from their origin.