A few years ago, the Lord called me out of a place of comfort and into a season of growth. I had no idea what was going to happen but I felt the release and then the prompt to move. Comfort and contentment were abundant. But left unchecked, comfort and contentment are breeding grounds for contempt and conceit.
I confess, life seems so much easier when I get to live it the way that I want to. When I let exactly the right people in, when I show up for exactly who I want to, when I give and serve those who are painless to serve. But truthfully, if that’s the way I show up for God’s people, I’m showing up on my terms and really only to serve myself. Furthermore, I’m not allowing the Holy Spirit to work in me and through His people.
Over the last few years, God has done great work in me when it comes to living in Biblical, missional community. Though a professing and active believer for about 10 years, I am only recently beginning to understand what community living looks like when it sits on the foundation of the Gospel. I haven’t gotten it completely figured out, and that will probably take a lifetime to do. But I have learned some helpful things along the way.
Discard the desire for idealistic, transactional community.
In the early days of attending my missional community (MC, small group, community group, etc), I was [unknowingly] looking for transactional relationships. I’d be particular with whom I would enter into conversation. I’d “miss” days when I thought there wouldn’t be any benefit for me attending. I’d run to the rescue if somehow the deep need that I could meet would also serve me. Essentially this: what can I give and get back in return? I didn’t realize that I saw community as a way to serve my needs. I had idealistic views of what community was supposed to be. Instead of showing up for my community with a posture that was others-centered, my posture was self-centered. Naive and immature? Yes. But I thank God that He showed up for me in the form of friends who would help me to see the beauty of belonging in true Biblical community.
If we are to be people who participate in God’s plan of transformation and restoration, we must be people who enter into relationship without idealistic expectations. We need to look for underlying, hidden thoughts that any of these relationships are meant to serve us alone. The relationships we enter into with the people in our communities are meant for us, but are ultimately created to serve our sovereign God for His glory and kingdom. We need to understand that our God who holds all things together, placed us all here together for a specific purpose: for all of His sons and daughters to be etched and chiseled into the image of His Son.
Our ideals will fall short of the Father’s one hundred percent of the time. We’re self-protecting, afraid of rejection, selfish, and controlling. But when we see ourselves as tools of God’s grace in the grand redemption narrative, we have freedom to enter into community on His terms. We ask ourselves questions like: What is God doing here? What is He doing with the people around me? How can I love these people? How do I need to ask these people to love me? What role do I get to play in it? What is God doing in and with me? God, what do you want me to do? What is your purpose? How do you want me to move? How can I join you in your work, Father? As we enter into community on the Father’s terms, we see that relational community becomes transformational community. Both of which are so much more fruitful and enjoyable than idealistic transactional community.
We must be people who are eager to maintain unity of the Spirit and a bond of peace.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
Psalm 133:1
Have you ever found yourself in volatile community? People begin to pick sides. Someone says something divisive and others run with it. One person thinks that his or her way is the only way that things should be. Somebody thinks something is missing and another decides that they want to sit in the driver’s seat. Disruption and disagreements ensue. Division roots itself in and spreads among the people. This kind of community is unpredictable and incongruent to the Gospel.
In Ephesians 4:3, Paul reminds us to be eager to maintain unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. As the Spirit is unified with the Son and the Father, we too must desire to be unified with one another, with wholehearted enthusiasm. Being eager to bear with one another with gentle, patient love, we are able to move toward people and conflict freely, obediently, and willfully. We should be quick to ponder our disagreements and consider our frustrations to discover precisely where either are stemming from (our own ego? conviction?). We can look to Jesus’ example of unity to the Father, humbling ourselves and choosing the will of God. We get to experience and receive His glorious grace through unity with one another, while remaining eager to maintain it by keeping in step with the Spirit. When we become attentive and aware of how the Holy Spirit is moving in us and in the life of the church, we are positioned to participate in His redemptive work instead of disrupting it, disagreeing with it, and delaying it.
When I understand that it is only by Jesus’ love for me that I am able to love my brothers and sisters, I — in love — am willing to move into places of tension in an effort to bring unity. Where there is unity, there is peace. Indeed, how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell and serve and love in unity.
“We are called to intentionally-intrusive, Christ-centered, grace-driven, redemptive community.” (Paul Tripp)
God repeatedly shows us in His Word that we are not meant to journey in isolation. He intentionally surrounds us with community to help us to recognize our inaccurate view of ourselves, to show us how we immorally govern ourselves, and to expose our self-righteousness. All things that if left alone, would drive us further and further away from our Father’s heart and the hearts of His people. We need people. We need people to intentionally intrude into our shadows not as slanderers, but as hand-holders and arm-lifters. We ourselves need to be centered in Christ, motivated and driven by His grace, ready and willing to move toward people in honesty and humility. We must individually choose to participate in the whole community understanding that, in our own personal lives, Jesus took the wrath and rejection the Father would have given us and it is because of Jesus’ love for each of us that we (our brothers and sisters included) will see the face of our Father in Glory.
God has given us the beautiful ministry of Christ-centered community to partner with the Holy Spirit in transforming us from this degree of glory to the next. He has entrusted us to a body of believers who help us transform to His image. The graciousness of living with men and women whose hearts are after Kingdom-things permits us to walk more confidently in who, through the grace of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God intended us to be. In community, we have an opportunity to model and teach one another how to trust, how to soften, and how to live safeguarded by the Cross. When we choose to be vulnerable with our brothers and sisters, allowing them to truly know our sin and struggles and giving them permission to speak God’s truth to us, we collaborate with the Spirit in the sanctification process. We will stir one another up so that everyone within is encouraged, exhorted, and reminded of our desperate need for God’s grace in order to live intentionally in the identity that Jesus has given us.
We show up and we keep showing up.
So what does all of this mean for us as we seek to belong to a body of believers? It means that we seek the will of the Father. It means that we spend time in the Word, learning what He purposes for us. It means that day by day we move toward the people in our communities instead of expecting them to move toward us. It means that we pray when we’d rather not. It means that we show up for people who might be different than we are. It means that we show up and we keep showing up. It means we seek to have a redemptive agenda. It means that we see ourselves as tools for God to use. It means we make ourselves available to however and wherever and whatever it is that He wants to do with us. It means that we look for opportunities when all we see are obstacles. It means that we look for ways that we can participate in God’s redemptive work. It means we look for (and to) the beauty and grace that Jesus sees in the people next to and in front of us. It means that day by day we lay down our desires and pick up His desire for us to be one. We look to our Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit and we weave ourselves in, we intertwine, we hang on tight.