Jeremy L. Berg

I can’t believe I’ve never made this observation before.  We all know Christianity and church life is all about COMMUNITY.  Well, at least it has become the big buzz word for the last decade or two.  The Sunday worship routine that had for so long become a spectator sport with the people on stage providing the entertainment has realized the relational vacuum this way of doing church has left in the hearts of people starving for intimate, Kingdom-centered, Jesus-shaped community.

The past decade or two has seen the rise of the small group ministry and a resurgence of the “house church” model which both attempt to fill this relational vacuum.  Churches are rightly encouraging their people to get plugged into “small groups”, “life groups”, “covenant groups”, “community groups”, “small churches” or whatever you want to call them. You’ll hear reminders from the pulpit that the Sunday morning worship service does not take the place of real, authentic, kingdom community with one another. This has been a healthy move back toward the kind of community we see characterizing the early church in, for instance, Acts 2:

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:43-47).

As a staff member of a church, I whole-heartedly support the power and effectiveness of small groups for living out our Christian life together — growing in discipleship, encouraging one another, sharing resources, offering each other accountability and reaching out to others in evangelism and community service.  However, just today I made an observation that really opened my eyes to see how far we Christians still have to go in achieving the kind of life-on-community God has truly created us for.

Here’s my observation: Sadly, community has become the GOAL of the Christian life rather than the natural STARTING POINT.

This is one huge difference between our highly individualized American culture and the ancient localized, tight-knit community structures of the early church. The early Christians lived in close proximity to one another, shared their resources as needed, watched and raised each others’ children, ate together regularly, prayed together naturally and out of this community would naturally flow service, witness, worship, discipleship and all the other practices that should characterize the life of every Christian. They started with community and the rest of their Christian life flowed from it.

As I see it, many of our churches are trying everything they can to help busy, scattered people form community in the first place.  We use programs, classes, worship gatherings, seminars, events, outreach and service opportunities, mission trips and retreats all as ways for people to hopefully connect with one another and begin to establish some level of community with other Christians.  But the point is: Sadly, we live in a society that has chosen to make intimate community an after thought, a secondary concern that we might get around to if we can somehow fit it into our busy schedules — you know, “when life slows down a bit.”

This reality was brought home to me today in two ways.  First, my wife and I were invited to consider joining a small group of young couples from our church who meet on Sunday nights for dinner fellowship and Bible study.  We would love to but… and here come the excuses. But we live 45 minutes away from church and these friends, and we really love lazy Sundays watching football on the couch at home, and don’t really want to make the drive across the city twice in one day (we are there in the morning for church and this would be 3 hours of driving).  Welcome to life in 21st century America!  We hardly know our neighbors next door, our friends are scattered about the Twin Cities suburbs, and, apparently we’re more worried about gas mileage and football than the life-in-community God has created us for.  This is the world we live in, and I know we’re not alone.

Secondly, however, one wonders if we have to go along with the societal norm.  I was listening to pastor Greg Boyd interviewed on the Nomad Podcast today. He was talking about intentional kingdom community and the necessity of swimming against the current of the American culture.  He shared his personal story of how he and his wife decided to uproot themselves from their comfortable suburban home and lifestyle of convenience in order to move into an inner city neighborhood along with two other couples from their church to live side by side and “do life together.”  They now share cars, food, get together at each other’s homes 2 or 3 nights a week for food, fun, fellowship and prayer.  Nothing fancy.  Just good old fashioned community.  But, and it’s a big but, they had to intentionally go against the cultural norm, boldly uproot themselves and move across the city to establish a community from which they can now pursue kingdom service, support, growth, accountability, witness and more.

But the bottom line is: Community shouldn’t be the goal of the Christian life (as it seems to be in the church these days) but rather the natural starting point for living out the Kingdom life together. Even with the healthy impact of the small group movement it still appears that we have a long, uphill battle ahead of us before we can experience the kind of fellowship described in Acts 2.