One way to do community…
May 27th, 2010 by ljkim
In the last post I said “what if God wants you to move into a particular neighborhood?” You’d do it for work, you’d do it for romance, you’d do it for convenience and “because you got a great deal” on a Coop – but would you do it for God? There are many different reasons why God might want you at some point to live in a particular place… Location can be important for lots of reasons – social justice, cultural evangelism – but I just want to talk about one that I think will apply to most of you: Christian community.
If you’ve ever tried to live like Jesus, following him, and five years afterwards realized you’ve failed completely – there’s not one thing you’ve done in the past five years that an outsider seeing you would think resembles Jesus… One reason that could happen is because of Salt. Ever put a grain of salt on an egg? Taste salty to you? A little bit? No. You can’t taste it at all. Salt doesn’t scale in the single digits. You need a critical mass of salt before you can even taste that there is ANY salt in there. The same is true for your “witness.”
You can only see Jesus – and other people can only see Jesus – in your life while you are in community. Just the way I wouldn’t know it was you if I just saw your left nostril – or your right – or your upper lip – I’d need to see a bunch of these things together to be able to recognize you… In the same way you can only see Christians being Christian in a community. Do you need a lot of salt to be able to taste it? Eh, it’s a miniscule part compared to the rest of the meal – it’s not much, a tiny portion – and yet once you have that small critical mass it flavors the whole thing.
So how could we do Christian community geographically? Pick a neighborhood, and get five or six people in your Church community to live nearby and commit to being a family with them: Share resources. Share babysitting. Share Costco cards and parking. Have spontaneous get togethers (want to grab a pizza? Want to watch this DVD?) – and invite your other neighbors along. Let people see how Jesus made you love each other, and invite them to share in the good things…
You will have fun. It will be like college all over again, only without the papers and exams. You’ll learn to be a better friend, and spouse, and brother or sister – and did I mention it will be fun? You’ll not only save yourself (in a sense) but help save those around you as they see close up what it means for people to be sinners-saved-by-grace living in non-judgmental mutually affirming community.
“How do you know? Do you have this?” No I don’t. Not that I haven’t tried – but we don’t have this right now… I had it a little during the time I lived in the UWS – but that’s not what I base this on. ”So what do you base this on?” I may not have this, and you may not have this – but I know this works, and is important because EVERY single Christian who’s made a difference in history – and that I know of – has had this. Can there be isolated Christians who did it on their own? Sure – but I’ve never heard of any of them… Every extraordinary Christian that I’ve read about has been part of an extraordinary Christian community. So if you really want to follow Jesus – if you really want to lead an extraordinary life – if you really don’t want to sell-out and to the suburban American dream – then at some point you will probably need to get in geographic Christian community.
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