REPOST: Called to do something greater than “build community”

In January of this year, I posted an article that generated some excellent discussion. It was on the topic of referring to, and seeing the church as, a “community.” Adopting that cultural language and concept derails a far more significant identity for the church provided in the Bible. So I’m re-posting the original article here for those who wanted to further consider this topic.

I’ve been convicted of something, so I’m going to make a change.

It’s not something earth-shattering, but it’s important. It’s not a sin, but it is a matter of becoming more biblical. It’s correcting something I hadn’t noticed adequately but was part of. Here goes:

I will no longer refer to the church as a “community.”

I’m making this change because the church isn’t a community, isn’t supposed to be a “community,” and our taking on the cultural language and concept of “community” is making the church into more of a community than it is the church.

“Building community,” being in a “faith community,” and other such phrases are some of the hot buzz words in our culture. We think if we’re community-oriented, we’re on the right track. But the concept of community for the church is taking us off track in a major way.

In our culture, community is what you see when you look out your window. It’s being part of a group of disconnected people, most of whom you don’t know, and usually are content not to. We use communities for what we want and need, and only pay what is demanded (via taxes) while preferring the free services offered. We rarely give anything back to the community unless there’s something in it for us.

Communities are, more often than not, made up of shallow relationships. There are some communities which are more supportive than others, but these are more the exception than the rule.

Communities are distant because we keep them at a distance, they don’t “live” with us. We come and go in our community according to our own needs and wants, and most interaction is more in passing than on purpose.

Fortunately, Jesus never taught us to go into the world and make communities. Not even communities of disciples. Instead, the Bible describes the church as being the body of Christ, with each of us being a part of the body and connected to one another.

The Bible also describes the church as being the family of God. We aren’t simply neighbors (as in community), but brothers and sisters. We belong to each other because we belong to the same family, God’s family.

The picture of the church as described in the Bible is vastly more intimate than the concept of community. In your community, you may do something to help the poor, homeless person holding the cardboard sign at the stop light (although many of us lock our car doors, avoid eye contact, and speed away as quickly as possible). BUT … what if that homeless person was your brother? Or your sister?

Chances are, your response would be dramatically different.

We take care of our family, and our body, very differently than we do our “community.”

We live with, love, care for, and cherish our family. And we protect, provide for, and please our body. We give our time, our attention, and most of our resources to our family and taking care of ourselves. That’s a significantly greater interest and investment than we give to a “community.”

Now here’s the problem: the church has become good at building a “faith community” while losing sight that it is much more than that. It’s a family, God’s family. It’s a body that is intimately connected to each other.

Yet, we have created the church to be a community much like the communities we live in, unlike the model of the church we see in the Bible. Those early Christians cared for one another as if they were family, and the result was there was no one among them who had a need left unministered to (Acts 4:32-37). These Christians were known for their love for each other. They acted as if they belonged to one another … because they did!

When I was a kid, the churches I was a part of had a practice that reminded us that we belong to one another. The church members always referred to each other as “Brother …” or “Sister …” So when someone referenced me, they called me “Brother Scotty.” That’s because we were brothers and sisters in the family of God.

But when we think about community, we don’t think of “community” belonging to us in the intimate way family members do. We don’t think about, value, or respond to a community in the way we do our family or our body. We don’t engage our neighbors we don’t know like we do a little sister or big brother that we dearly love.

Jesus didn’t instruct us to go make communities. Instead, he wants us, as His body connected together, to be His ambassadors in bringing the lost into His family, NOT His community. The difference in that fact is so vast I’m not going to refer to the church as a community anymore, because it really is — and must be — much more!

Scotty