So, I’ve been crazy busy past few weeks being a part of a church plant (again). It’s been interesting, because I joined this group a little late, and so, I had to find new ways to be a part of this community - when a tight community already existed. To further complicate things, this group is very artistic. A LOT more artistic group than I’m used to hanging out with, so there was a cultural adjustment there as well.
Anyways… to get to what’s been churning in my head, I was having a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend, who was church hunting, and he said something that made me think:
I find lots of churches here all focus on “community”. everyone wants “community”, but I can’t help feel that overemphasis on community (like overemphasis on sanctification ultimately is inward-focused). While I’m searching for churches, that seems to be the biggest thing here. I don’t encounter too many churches that say they were made for worship or they’re community is for worship. It’s probably semantics…but I dunno. It doesn’t feel right.
And I thought about what my friend said. And with all this talk and emphasis about community in churches, I think he’s right. There is this constant search for community in America where we’ve become so disjointed with our neighbors and neighborhoods (starbucks is the new front porch). And so, I understand that glaring need for community and how Church can fill that need. But there’s tons of communities out there. Communities exist in infinite numbers outside of churches. Anyone can have community. Intellectual emergents have community. Sports fanatics have community. The Otherkin have community (yes, let’s see how many posts we can go before we don’t mention them :-P). In this community-deprived culture, people are finding community.
So, is that it? Is church only about building community? So, back to my experience these past few months. Within the difficulties of becoming ‘integrated’ into the core group of this new church, I found that I’m now a part of this community. I didn’t spend all my free time trying to hang out with these folks. I didn’t incessantly IM or post on their facebook walls trying to be their friends. I didn’t sit down with each of them learning their life story and knowing more about them to be their friend. No… rather, I became a part of them by being involved in a mission together. This mission is something that God has called each and one of us to do together, to bring light into dark places. And as much as non-Christian readers may cringe at that mission, it is something that I cannot ignore, or dumb down to make it more palatable to you. It is my mission here in this dark and depressed city, and I’m glad that I am not alone in this mission.
Church… is so much more than JUST a community. There’s a mission that each church is called to, and that mission being carried out together develops a community that does so much more: offers a sense of belonging that’s so much more meaningful to each member, and creates a community that is that much stronger knit. In a generation on a search to belong, people will lose their way if belonging is the ultimate goal.
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Tags: church, community, mission, missional
