Reggie Weems Blog

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…