“What is community?”
I heard it recently stated that “intimacy in a group as the foundation of community” is a decidedly modern idea. While I didn’t have much knowledge on the subject and the statement caught me off guard without a chance to respond to it, I did a little further researching on the topic.
If we are to say that from a Western perspective intimacy is a relatively modern notion, then we would be correct. In Western history, much of what would have been understood of as community before the Modern period was based more on national identity. More and more however, historians and anthropologists are discovering that intimacy were essential to non-Western civilizations as well. The Incan civilizations, the Pyrenees, and myriad African tribes among others see intimacy as central to belonging to a community.
The basic need of knowing and being known is a global need that can be experienced only in true community. This is not just “intimacy” “authenticity” or “emotionally bleeding all over the table”; it is something much deeper. This cannot be done in massive groups, but must be practiced in groups that fight for each other’s hearts – warriors for each other’s souls. This is the distinctiveness of Christian community: that we understand our community to flow directly out of the unending love seen in our Heavenly Father. This love is characterized by a dying and a living again for the sake of the other. Something that can be done in groups where people know each other deeply and prayerfully engage in life and death together.
Until the digital and electronic age, such community was limited to physical proximity, but now this kind of community can be continued indefinitely. Now even when people move away from each other, spiritual community can continue. Phones, email, and blogs are all ways of listening to the heart of our spiritual siblings, and encouraging each other to live out this self-sacrificing community in the relationships we find ourselves in.
What one must be careful of is not holding so tightly to the virtual relationships that God is not able to reproduce the gift of community in new relationships he has given you. We must connect with virtual friendships that encourage us to recreate the kind of community we have experienced with them with another brother or sister that is in close proximity to us today.
Finding one or two others who will fight for your heart and give of their lives to help you live. That is what community with and in Christ is all about.
Last 5 posts by Mark
- God is Wholly - October 2nd, 2008
- The Great Moderation - September 30th, 2008
November 7th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
You can delete this after you have read it since it does not have to do with your recent post (although I enjoyed it). I met you at the World Missions Workshop a few weeks ago. I and Vickie (my wife) are praying about starting a house church. I would like to ask you some questions via email. Could you please email me when you get the chance?