At the Margins

Jan at Church for Starving Artists wrote yesterday about the need to hear one another’s stories in building authentic community.

Sharing our stories is so important. 

I’ve found it the best foundation to lay for any group whether a missions team, intentional Christian community, or sunday gathering.

It enables us to love one another so much better.  Suddenly I have a glimpse into why Susan does all those things that drive me nuts and it’s not so bad any more. I’m able to sit in silence less awkwardly becaue I now know why John never speaks. Knowing how Jim grew up affords me more grace when he snaps at me.

A practical suggestion, having done this quite a few times by this point, is to have someone who is willing to be particularly vulnerable go first and set the tone.  It’s also good to encourage everyone to have a turn, sharing only what (and if) they are comfortable, taking particular care to value however much or little is shared.  It can take people a really long time to share their story, so I’ve found, if it’s a small group, taking a weekend retreat with the primary purpose of hearing everyone’s story makes it actually less arduous and forms a great foundation for authentic Christian community.

I used to think that I truly enjoyed conflict.  While I was in primary and secondary school, I loved to debate and was quick to jump into a fray.  As I’ve grown older, I’ve abandoned debating (having the desire to win) and started discussing (having the desire to learn).  I’m quick to challenge prevailing wisdom and theology and to seek to get to the Truth.  For me, it’s a socratic excercise that is apart from my feelings and who I am.  It’s why I used to think I was not conflict averse.

The last several weeks though, I have come into the realization that I am completely and utterly conflict adverse if the conflict has to do with interpersonal relationships or who I am.  It’s why I don’t speed when I drive.  Avoid breaking rules.  Hate getting into trouble no matter how minor it is.  And choose to ignore conflict instead of resolving it.  Real conflict exhausts me.  I don’t want to hurt or be hurt, so I pretend it doesn’t exist. 

I’m happy to change what I think–in fact I love for people to show me where I am academically wrong as it means I can be correct tomorrow.  However, I am not excited about changing who I am. I avoid conflict when it means that I might actually have to change what I do–become less selfish, love on another person’s terms, do something I find boring or banal.  Changing one’s position theologically takes mere moments and comes at little cost.  Changing how one lives takes time, long, arduous time.  It’s costly and it hurts–the Refiner’s fire is always uncomfortable.  Conflict requires me to contemplate the fact that I am not who I desire to be, that I am broken, sinful, and imperfect.  However, it is the only route to growth and holiness.

We live in community so that we can grow and become more like Christ.  Growth often, if not always, requires conflict. It’s why we have a committment to not only resolve conflict, but to acknowledge it when it exists.  It’s the thing I find hardest in community.  I love being surrounded by people 24-7–serving them and sharing the gospel.  I am easy-going and love sharing hospitality and bearing joy.  I enjoy listening to other’s problems and binding up their wounds.  I am made for community and so much of it comes completely and utterly naturally for me–it seldom if ever feels like a sacrifice.  And what a blessing that is!  The thing is, it means that I can so often ignore the fact that I am broken, selfish, and sinful; that I need to grow, need to learn, need to sacrifice, and need to change.  That I, too, am in need of the Spirit’s transformation.

I just read The Church and the Incubator, a wonderful article on Wrecked for the Ordinary by Adrienne Ashby.  Adrienne talks about a midwife in South Africa that has mothers of premature babies keep skin-to-skin contact with them instead of placing them in a mechanical, lonely, incubator. She then goes on to speak of Western churches as giant incubators and the need for human-to-human contact.

Last night I went to Holy Grounds at our neighbor’s church.  Rob Ross, a friend I’d met through Displace Me, was preaching his last sermon from Luke 10:38-42.

It’s the story that is often used to instruct people to slow down and sit at the feet of God.

Rob chose a different exposition, encouraging a balance between prayer and simply time with God and with service.  Certainly a true and good teaching from the verses!

While he was speaking, I kept asking God to speak to me about the verses.

The imagery he put in my heart was about the homeless in DC.  On any given evening, you can sit in one of the parks and see church van after church van, coming by to drop off food.  Those churches are doing a wonderful thing and Jesus spoke a lot about feeding the hungry.  The problem is that there are very few Marys willing to sit at the feet of the homeless men and women and just listen.

So often I want to see the results of my work, to know that my labor is effective.  The problem is that Christ often asks us to do things which we will never see the results of.  Sometimes we are so focused on doing things that we forget to slow down to listen and love.  Love takes time.  Love takes sacrifice.  And scariest of all, loving someone else means that we will often get hurt.  Love is intangible–I can say I gave out 100 meals or built a home for a family, but it’s impossible to quantify love.  Besides telling people that you sit on a bench and talked to a homeless person all evening is a lot less glamorous than saying you fed dozens of people.  Even worse, people might think you are lazy.

For the past couple of years Grace Community Church has been sending teams to visit the Quaresma family–a brazilian couple that, after having 3 biological kids, began adopting.  Today their family is over 30 and by the grace of God they are the most functional family I have ever known.  The first year we went, we wanted to help them build their new house, instead we cleared a field and spent a lot of time with the family.  The next year, we painted their new house.  The thing is though, what the Quaresmas cared about was not the painting or the hoeing–the cost of our plane tickets alone would have paid for our labor many times over.  What they cared about was getting to know us and us them.  They would have been just as happy for us to just show up and hang out.

Our desire was to build something we could see and touch, God’s desire was to build love in our hearts.

This morning I read a short blog post on Common Grounds entitled, “What does authentic Christian community look like?”

In it, Meghan Gouldin asks us to finish the sentence: “Authentic Christian community____________________.”

It’s what each of us living in community grapples with daily.  At least I hope we do.

Read her post and respond at

http://commongroundsonline.typepad.com/common_grounds_online/2007/07/meghan-gouldin-.html

The New Monastics

Download | Link

Artist: Speaking of Faith

Duration: Appx 58 min

Created: Thu, 10 May 2007

Category: Speech

Subject: Shane Claiborne

Interviewer: Krista Tippett

NPR’s show Speaking of Faith this week explores New Monasticism in an interview with Shane Claiborne.

So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore

Rating: 4 out of 5

Author: Jake Colsen

Year: 2006

Publisher: Bodylife Publications

ISBN: 0964729229

The writing in this book is frankly quite bad, however the content is amazing and inspired. It offers a strong challenge to the institutional church and paints a radical transforming picture of the Church.  Even better, you don’t have to by it.  It’s available for free download.

It’s a question I am often asked. It’s also a question that makes me cringe. I mean, I know what they are asking, but I feel to respond with Grace Community Church or even Culpeper House is woefully inadequate.

I mean, as much as I love the people in each community and believe that they are in fact my Church, to describe either one simply as my Church denies a core reality of Church.

I mean, Church is not a destination or a club, it’s not something that is even geographical. It is much more organic than that. I believe that I am not only called to be a follower of Christ all the time, but to be the Church all the time. This simply is impossible if I define Church by an organization or building. Not to mention unhealthy. Christ spent much of His time in the world. We have created churches that are clubs, places that shelter us from the world rather than equipping us to love those of the world.

For me, Church is and happens whenever 2 or more followers of Christ gather for the purpose of seeking after Him (the above diagram is far from exhaustive). Sure, it’s something that happens on Sunday mornings, but it’s also something that happens many times a day in my community. We can be the Church when we are having dinner with friends, during late night conversations, during Bible Studies. I’m having Church when I spend time with the homeless downtown. I’m having Church when I spend time with His Gathering in Ft. Myers, Florida and when I’m eating breakfast with Stu. In fact, I’m having Church when I’m praying alone, as the Holy Spirit dwells in me.

I recently read a great book about being the Church, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore by Jake Colsen. It’s available in print, but you can also download it online at http://www.jakecolsen.com/JakeStory.pdf. It’s not Shakespeare, but it was really interesting to me—it’s not social justice at all, but presents a view of the Church that is incredibly different and to which I’ve only recently begun to be exposed. It’s a very worthwhile read and, if you read it, I would love to hear what you think.

Christian vs. Christ-follower

Link

Created: Wed, 01 Nov 2006

My friend Colin just sent me a link to a set of Christian parodies of the Mac/PC commericals. It’s a great concept, but I’m afraid they fall short.

Essentially it’s an issue of good concept, poor articulation. These are anti-Christendom, but leave one thinking that being a Follower of Jesus is even more meaningless. They spent a lot of time dismantling Christendom but failed to equally develop what it means to Follow Jesus.

My friend and housemate Ryan provided a very good critique:

Good application of the Mac/PC ads. But, as Colin says, poor and lukewarm generalization of Christian and ‘Christ-Follower’ (Shouldn’t they be the same? Let’s not draw even more lines to define who we are by differentiating ourselves
from others.) Another attempt to market Christ on a platform of feel-good Christianity? Probably. “Hey, I smoke, have a tongue-piercing, don’t take showers, AND I love Jesus; so that makes my relationship with Christ more authentic and me more ‘real’, man.” Would have been better if the ads de-emphasized the very things it brought to light.

At any rate I think they are interesting and worth discussing.