On Community

Written by Darrin Patrick, February 6, 2009. Love this.

We are alone. We feel it. The universe is big and we are small. Sin has caused this "aloneness." We try to relate to others, but that doesn't seem to satisfy us. We get disappointed when others don't act like God (and meet all the needs that we demand they meet) or when others don't treat us like God (with the accompanying worship and praise that is due us). The truth is that we don't get the community thing. We like the word. We revel in the concept. Community sounds really good. But it seems to elude us. We need a new grid that is not centered on our felt need for "community."

Community began in eternity past. God who has always existed has always existed in community: Father, Son and Spirit. The Godhead models what community is: equality accompanied with submission. Being unified along with being different. God is the ground and starting place for community.

Community is experiencing Christ through one another.

Community is knowing and being known, serving and being served, celebrating and being celebrated. Community is hanging out with Christian friends and laughing about stupid things. Community is gradually opening up our true selves to people and letting them see who we really are. Community is telling each other the truth in love.

Community is not just being "nice."

True community involves being in a bad mood and still being pleasant to others. Community means asking for help. To be in community means to be in need. To feel other peoples' pain, that's community. To think more about what others need, that's community. Community involves crying and looking foolish in front of others. To be in community means to be uncomfortable at times. Community involves risking our image. Community is not just eating together. Community is not seeing people at church. Community is not saying, "Fine" when asked how you are doing. To be in community involves using your phone a lot.

To experience community is to arrange one's life in such a way that fellow members of the church are seen not as a burden to deal with, but friends with which to do life.

Community is seeing church as a family to belong to, not a service to go to. Community involves simplifying one's lifestyle in order to welcome others.

Community means sacrificing time and money for those who need either. To listen more than you talk is community. To work out all conflicts and never hold grudges is community. Community is the way of Jesus who related to and lived with twelve very imperfect men when he could have accomplished his mission and lived his life without them. Jesus showed us how to do community by who he was and how he lived.

The Journey of Life

This was posted on Pastor John Currid's blog a while ago, and I thought it was interesting:

Today one hears a lot of talk about how each one of us is on a "journey", that is, a journey of life, an adventurous journey, or even a spiritual journey. Indeed, Buddhists talk about the journey of life, and so do astrologers, witches, numerologists, Muslims, and all sorts of religions, pseudo-religions, and even atheists. The language of "journey" has taken over the business world; one can rarely open the newspaper and not hear a bank spouting "we will help you on your journey". But I think, as Christians, we need to be very careful in using such language as "our journey" and "our story" -- for most people today, such language simply reflects a meandering, rambling path that has no purpose, end, or goal. For a post-modern generation there is no telos, that is, no end or purpose. There is no specific destination, but many are simply on the waves of time and chance, and they are being taken wherever circumstances take them. This type of journey has no climax; these people simply do not know where they are going.

The Christian is not on that type of journey. As Thomas Carlyle said, "The man without purpose is like a ship without a rudder." Christians do have an end, a purpose, and a telos: we are on a pilgrimage. We have a definite end and destination. We are heading for the celestial city, the city with foundations, that is, the land that will never perish or fade away (1 Peter 1:4). And even more than that, our pilgrimage is not meandering or wandering or out of control because the steps of our pilgrimage have been set by the very sovereignty of God. We are on a pilgrimage and not an unknown journey. We "follow in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21).

HT: John Currid

The Journey in the New York Times!

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article on The Journey in St. Louis. Here's an excerpt:

"ST. LOUIS — Southern Baptists, as a rule, do not drink. But once a month, young congregants of the Journey, a Baptist church here, and their friends get together in the back room of a sprawling brew pub called the Schlafly Bottleworks to talk about the big questions: President Bush, faith and war, the meaning of life, and “what’s wrong with religion.”

“We go where people are because we feel like Jesus went to the people,” said the Rev. Darrin Patrick, founder of the Journey.

“That’s where people are having their conversations about things that matter,” the Rev. Darrin Patrick, senior pastor and founder of the Journey, said about the talks in the bar. “We go where people are because we feel like Jesus went to the people.”

The Journey, a megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals, is representative of a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right.

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves."