thoughts on being Relational and Communal

If you were going to take a difficult journey, you’d be much more successful to do it with a friend or two. If you saw or read Into the Wild you may have thought, if you’re like me, “What an idiot! Why did that dude go out there alone?!” Or if you’re slightly more compassionate, “What a tragedy. If he just had some help he could have made it.” But the lesson is clear: if we try to go it alone we are in danger of dying.

Churches don’t always seem to help either. Many of us have thought “how can I have gone to the same church for years and still felt so alone?”

VC is a network of house churches, which is a slightly approach than many churches. For instance, a lot of churches are OK with you just coming on Sunday and not giving anything back (except for maybe some $). So if you go to a megachurch on a Sunday, they may have several staff who are providing that service to you. We have no full-time paid staff. Everything we do is sort of pot-luckish. A give and take. We take turns caring for the children, making meals, teaching, etc. In essence, we share the gifts God has given us for the benefit of the community. Rather than approaching church as “What can I get out of it?,” the better question may very well be “What sacrifices can I bring to God and others?”

In some ways we wanna get back to the days of barn-raising and bartering. Instead of looking up some random electrician in the phone book, what if you could walk up on your neighbor’s front porch and ask him to check it out? What if you wouldn’t even need to pay him because he wants some body work done on his car, which happens to be your gift?!

From “going it alone” to joining a tribe

I remember being younger and loving punk rock. The way we punks distinguished ourselves from others was to discover obscure bands before anyone else. When that band “sold out” (which means actually started gaining fame and money like they intended to do) we wouldn’t listen to them anymore because we wanted to be different. What is our phobia about being a part of a tribe?

For most of human history humans knew their place in this world by the group of people they lived and traveled with. They knew the names of their ancestors and who “begat” their great great grandfather. Do you? We’ve heard that it takes a village to raise a child, but we often don’t even know our neighbors’ names anymore. We go to church or to social events and present a false-self (what Brennan Manning calls an “Impostor”) in hopes that others will accept us. But even if they do, they still have not accepted us for our true selves.

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam writes about the decline of bowling leagues as a metaphor for this wave of rampant individualism that is sweeping the country.

In biblical terms, one of the weapons of the enemy is to isolate us and make us feel alone.  In 1 Kings 19, we see Elijah dealing with this issue:

14 He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."

 15 The LORD said to him, "Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. 16 Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. 17 Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. 18 Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."

It seems like Elijah has been trying to do it all by his self, and God says “look at all these other folks just like you. Why don’t you join them?”

The battle for us is that we yearn for community but “yearn even more for social and economic prizes individual mobility can bring” (Vanier, 2). Our culture wants products and programs that give us the most reward for the least sacrifice. Community has its benefits, but can also be rather messy and often demands a lot. To make it work, we must maintain Christ’s teaching to “take up our cross daily.” Just like in a marriage, one gives up some of their rights for the good of the relationship.

Our culture is built largely around competition, stemming from our Greco-Roman Olympic tendencies and beyond. We allow our identity to consist of how we rate compared to everyone around us....we compare our cars, our houses, our looks, our jobs, even our spirituality.

Children of a Canadian Indian tribe were once offered a prize for whoever could answer an American teacher’s questions first. The teacher was shocked that no one would answer the question alone, but instead would all work together and shout out the answer at the same time. Otherwise, “winning” would separate them from the others, and the child would gain a “prize” but lose the community.

Along with our isolation is a dangerous form of egoism. We begin thinking that we are the center of the world and therefore we value others based on what they can do for us. Community, on the other hand, operates when we operate as a whole, a mutual give and take.

Living in community is for our benefit but also for the benefit of others: like Abraham, our call is to be blessed in order to be a blessing. We are called to relocate to the abandoned places of the empire. Some folks in our community have even taken vows of chastity, like a marriage to this neighborhood.

Mission: community does not just exist for itself

A working community allows mission to thrive on many levels. For example, if 3 neighbors decide to share one lawn mower since they only use it once a week (if that), then the money spent on the other two lawn mowers is now freed up for other projects. Maybe they could even buy a lawn mower for their neighbors in need to share!

Take it a step further, and folks could share loads more. At the Brownhouse, costs of internet, food, utilities, and more are shared. This lowers expenses which frees up more money to give away, or the opportunity to work less and have more time to be a good neighbor.

It is important to understand that the motivation for such a lifestyle is not so we can have more money to spend on ourselves. Rather, it allows us the ability to pour energy and resources into caring for the poor and oppressed.

We must not come into community because it’s the hip thing to do or try to meet all of our needs. We come to forgive and be forgiven 70 times 7.

We also shouldn’t succumb to the danger of seeking an ideal community or utopia, but rather love those God has placed already in our lives. The ideal doesn’t exist. Vanier says “If we are looking too much for our own peace- we will never find it, because peace is the fruit of love and service to others.” (46) We should move from “community for myself” to “myself for the community.”

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says “He who loves community, destroys community; he who loves the brethren, builds community.......People enter community to be happy. They stay when they find happiness comes in making others happy.”

Later, Bonhoeffer says “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.” In other words, we need to be comfortable with solitude with God in order to come into community from a healthy place.

“Community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate” (Vanier). So if you have that honeymoon allusion that VC is “finally that place where they are getting church right and full of perfect people,” then you will soon be disillusioned and see that, like a marriage, it takes lots of work. You will discover that others have issues that drive you crazy, but you have the choice whether you will make the commitment to love them for better or worse.

Obviously community only works in conjunction with the other values of VC. For example, Faith and Ancient Future values help us approach community from a centered and restful place. More specifically, fixed hour prayer is a daily reminder that we are here for God rather than self. Unfortunately, it is even possible to replace God with community. We can rely too much on the community to meet our needs and forget about God.

Many groups come together to fight an external enemy; true community realizes that the enemy is inside ourselves. It is our selfishness, pride, and ignorance that endanger the world. “Humility and trust are more at the foundation of community life than perfection and generosity” (Vanier, 47).

When Jesus gathered his first community of disciples, there were insecurities and fears that he had to help them grow through. “Who will sit by your right hand?” His answer was that the greatest are those who serve, and he gave the disciples a mission to work on together: announce good news to the poor, heal the sick, and liberate by casting out demons. This is the mission of every Christian community. “When Jesus sent his disciples out on mission, he told them to be poor, to take nothing with them. And he told them to do things that were impossible for them to do alone. So it is for all missions” (Vanier, 87).

We are not a community of the helpers and those who need help....we are one body. We do not want to see the poor as “objects of charity, but rather to receive them as a source of life and of communion” (Vanier, 95).

Literature to dig deeper: Community and Growth by Jean Vanier, Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, Life Together by Dietrich Boenhoeffer, Abba’s Child by Brennan Maning

Questions to ponder...
1. What parts of community scare you?
2. Is there something that keeps me back from presenting myself in community?
3. If you were about to marry someone, it would be wise to establish what your hopes and dreams are for your life journey, and to understand the same about the other. If those seem to be in conflict, a marriage could be an unwise decision. Same with community. Does VC seem like a place where your hopes and dreams could happen?
4. What gifts do you have to bring to community?

Copyright 2008 • Vineyard Central
1757 Mills Avenue, Norwood, OH 45212 • 513-396-7202