The house church is a wonderful expression of family, friendship, and community life.
In my humble opinion, true community life, vulnerable relationships, and family-type support is not just a good thing but, rather, an essential for the Christian life. There are over 50 “one another” verses in the New Testament because we live, grow, minister, become healthy, and find support in the context of real relationships.
Jamie, at BeChurch, describes this well:
People were designed to need each other and rely on each other. People were designed to learn and grow from loving interaction with other people. That is why a safe and loving family is such an important thing for children. They need those relationships to develop properly. It’s the same with us as believers… we need healthy relationships with other followers of Jesus to experience all of the blessings and freedom that God has in store for us as His people…
When we find ourselves in a loving relationship with other believers we begin to live life in a new way, a more freeing way. We have people to encourage us when we need it; we have people to build us up. We have the awesome gift of having a support structure to rely on when things get tough. A man doesn’t have this freedom when he lives his life as a lone ranger. His life is spent chasing his tail trying to meet all of his needs or find some sort of support in other way. He is living in a way that is contrary to the way that God designed people.
True community is a biblical ideal. The church is spoken of in “family” terms frequently.
Yet… it’s not easy. It requires intentionality.
Scott Peck describes the stages that community life might go through:
For any group to achieve community in the truest sense, it must undertake a journey that involves four stages: “pseudocommunity,” where niceness reigns; “chaos,” when the emotional skeletons crawl out of the closet; “emptiness,” a time of quiet and transition; and finally, true community, marked both by deep honesty and deep caring.
I am going to share six components of developing community that I have found we must be intentional about:
1. Vulnerability and authenticity. Creating community that is safe and that reflects God’s own love does not just happen. Someone has to risk being vulnerable and saying, “This is who I really am.” We are spiritual and human, both. Our humanness is shared in common with all. Sharing our humanness does not make us weak—it makes us close to other humans. It allows us to fulfill the biblical command to “accept one another as Christ has accepted you.” Someone has to be deliberate about taking the risk to take the masks off. In this environment of acceptance, others will do the same and true community will develop.
2. Make room for people to share. There needs to be times during meals, gatherings, get-togethers where people have space to share their lives. This may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how quickly we can fill our times together with talk about everything except ourselves. We often wait to be invited before we will share our lives with others. Someone has to ask the real questions!
3. Someone has to model what it means to console others. Christians tend to fix and advise when others have needs. This can be helpful, but very often this is an attempt to do the job of the Holy Spirit. Many times, God is very good at leading Christians into the truth they need, what He asks of us is that we learn to console one another: weep with those who weep. This is our job. This is how we stand by one another in support and closeness.
4. Get involved in the threads of each other’s lives. We need to know, really, what is happening with one on a daily and weekly basis. What are the circumstances, issues, problems, and needs that are being wrestled with. There are many ways to communicate and we need to use them all: gatherings, prayer requests, phone, email, one-on-one get-togethers. Relationships don’t just happen. They are built one brick at a time.
5. Plan on conflict. Good relationships are built on the inevitability of conflicts that are faced and resolved to the point where the relationship is even stronger. Relationships are made to grow us. We must deal with the real issues of hurt, pride, anger, communication, and forgiveness. This is the stuff of relationship. To not plan for this is to settle for superficial relationships that blow away at the first hint of strain.
6. Be willing to let go. Not all relationships are going to continue to be close, even when they are good. We want to have great community. We will have great community. But it will sometimes be time to re-arrange. God does this. We don’t become so attached to community that it becomes our god. Community does not meet all our needs, God does. Community is meant to grow us up. Sometimes we have to let go of it being the “end all” that we thought it would be.
I love community. I love community life. I am called to be a builder of community life. Being part of a transformational family is, I believe, at the heart and soul of what it means to “be” the church.
But… it’s messy, difficult, demanding, sometimes wearisome and frustrating… as well as wonderful, fulfilling, and life-changing. It requires constant attention. As Scott Peck says:
A group of people never become a community and stay a community. They continually fall out of community, back into chaos or pseudocommunity. What character-izes a healthy, ongoing, sustained community is the rapidity with which it is able to say, “Hey, we’ve lost it. We need to go back and work on ourselves.
What’s your experience with it?
Go to Part 5: What About Leadership
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Comments
7 responses to “House Church Basics– Pt. 4: Community Life”
It is rather sad for me to say, but I have little or no real healthy community living experience. I grew up in a most dysfunctional family and have only recently begun to correct some of my most glaring defects and become willing to work on the others I find. So, “community” seems to be based on “communication”. i love M.Scott Peck’s work. He really nails the struggle of relationship. It is a working out of our stuff with each other, which takes trust, will, commitment, courage and risk. I haven’t seen that sort of thing working very well in Christian circles, although I have seen it and I long to be part of it. It seems that we (I) share a little and run, or get offended and hide. Sometimes we (I) just have to let go. That’s OK. But I hope to see more courage in Christian men to become a true Christian community. The first requirement is availability and second, health. I must be available to have relationship and then I must be spiritually and emotionally healthy (not perfect just willing to “grow”). Maybe viable is a better word. Anyway, I see that we are not often available to each other and so our community remains small,divided, fractured, distracted and insignificant. Arise and Connect! Be Free!
I love the community that I have been enjoying within our house church. I am developing deeper relationships with people that I have known for most of my life. These people have seen me at my best and my worst. (I grew up and went through my teen years with these people.) I have had the benefit of seeing the steadfast faith of some of the older members and I have shared the same struggles as many of the younger.
This “comfortable” sense of belonging makes me dread the idea that I may need to move on out of my comfort zone.
I can plan forays out and about but I see this group as home. I want to come to a place where I can say here I am God use me and mean, use me wherever.
I can see the danger of a group becoming to comfortable where they are at. I know that some people are called to stay and “hold down the fort”, but I see a danger in myself of seeing my role in a group as the leader, the one who knows how things should be done. I fear this; I feel that the church needs to move as the spirit leads not as a man leads. When people begin to look to me for answers I cannot help but to “turn it on” and give them an answer, whether it’s from God or me. Part of the reason I am writing this is because I have found that by putting concerns out there before God and man I create a sense of accountability for myself and I give people I trust the license to keep me in check.
Thanks for letting me ramble
This was so good i wish I had a photographic memory to retain it all. (Good, healthy, safe)..Community is IMPERATIVE to our walk with God. It has made all the difference in my life and I’ve seen it make miraculous differences in others too.
At Spirit West Coast a few years back one of the speakers was sharing on this subject. He directed us to Romans 12:9-13 ” Love must be sincere. hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”
He added that the way to develop authentic community was; When the real you, meets real needs, for the right reasons, in the right way.
To Aarons comment…i remember the first time I was thrown out of my safe little nest of community…I hated the idea, but a wise mentor knew I had grown enough to be able to fly…and with the Holy Spirit i was able to soar.
If you don’t take that test flight you may never give to others what God has for you to give and share. I know you will eventually fly, but I understand that sense of longing to stay in a safe nest.
I appreciate your humbleness too in not wanting to speak unless it’s of the Spirit. God has given you a spirit of authority and not that you will never make a mistake (boy let me tell you about feeling you’ve spoken out of turn ..my butt has permanent bruises I’ve given myself..this week included…it’s how the Father keeps us humble I think) However in the short time I’ve known you I have seen that desire to be in the groove of the Spirit on you. To encourage you…..someone new who came this week was not sure he was liking our style of Church, but something you said made him think again and he is willing to come back and try us on for size again. Praise God for working through you!!!
Cindy High
I live with about 50 saints that desided to buy homes in the same neiborhood, very close to one another. We are living the realities that are being discussed on this format. Not to say that living so close is the only way to have community but it makes your every day life in the church much easier. Time early in the morning together, walking and sharing the Lord together, spontanious meeting and meals together,children being in each others lives, and true exposure to one another.
Come visit anytime you would like, we would love to share the Lord together with other believers. My e- mail should be posted. Here’s my #434-531-2730.
I just want to stand in solidarty with what john is saying.. I hear you Bro! Your not alone! I ‘ve been a Christian ten years, and have found what my leaders have called, “Koinonia” very, very elusive. Often despairing over my inability to find a deep community. Exhausted by all the teaching and talk about things that are, “Too wonderful for me” Often beating myself for never being able to change.. or connect. But i praise Our God, Our heavenly Father for Jesus, the Good Sheperd.. Who never leaves us or forsakes us!
What I love about this movement is that it talks about all the things I (and most of the world) are looking for. Simplicity. Hope. Love. Community.
John, I hope to see what you hope to see brother, in my heart and my life, and the lives of those around me. I pray that the holy Spirit makes it grow. Lord, give us courage..Come Lord Jesus..
On a date with a non christian girl last year ( Shock horror!!) in the course of a Dinner conversation, the topic of Fatherhood came up. I said, (speaking from a deep sense of Fatherlessness in my own Childhood) ” Theres a lot of Fatherless people oout there…” she hated that I was “religioous.” ( Not that I go to Church at all these days) but Nodded solemnly at this statement. “yes,” She said. “There is.”
I listen to some of these comments and I long for what some of you guys are experiencing. After leaving the church I loss every person in my life: believers that is. I spent my life sharing Christ to unbelievers and it appears that I gained more love and compassion from them! Its difficult trying to explain to unbelievers the obvious separation in the Church that hey see among believers. I had to leave…it just simply wasn’t and isn’t of God.
I read these comments and I wonder if I will ever again find a group of Christians that love GOD as I do and who have my understanding regarding the damage being done to believers inside of the institutional Church. I have only one friend who understands and we spend time seeking out other believers only to find believers who think we’re in sin and on our way to hell because we don’t go to their churches. We LONG for a community of REAL believers!
That must be an awe growing experience. Sometimes I feel like I am dying and I cry out to Jesus and he brings resolution. But I know it incumbent upon me to find a community….and I have been trying. I don’t want to be alone like this.
Nice bog you have here. I pretty much lurk the internet when I’m bored and read all I can about the organic lifestyle, but I really liked you view on things. I’ll bookmark the site and subscribe to the feed!