Thoughts on Christian Community

This summer through a variety of experiences in my life combined with a good selection of reading from both the scripture and a selection of other authors God has been teaching me about his church and the nature of Christian community. I don’t often take the time to sit down and write blogs about such subjects, but I figured this would help me to reduce some of my thoughts to writing and let me share some of the things that I am learning.

This summer our life group at Meadowbrook began with the question: “What should the church be that it isn’t?” With this question we launched into a discussion that we hoped would help us to live out God’s call on our lives to be his body the church. Our desire was not to be critical of the church but to see how we could live faithfully in obedience to Christ. So far this has been a wonderful experience that has led me farther into reflection of the nature of God’s community and its foundations. I am excited to see where our discussion and actions go from here and I have developed a sense of expectancy for God to do mighty things within our group and our church at large. I’m not sure what this might be, all I know is that God is moving and is about to do things that I pray surpass any expectations that we could formulate.

Going back to the original question that we posed at the beginning of the summer, I began to wonder if we were asking the right question. This led me to see if there were any other ways that we might address the issue of the church, other ways to probe into its nature, its call, its mission in this world. Then I came to Cottonwood.

As part of my seminary program I did an internship at Cottonwood Baptist Church in Dublin this summer. Cottonwood is a unique church that has experienced the movement of God in the last ten years in significant ways. Although, it is not perfect, it is doing many things that are healthy for the church and faithful to Christ’s call to his body.

In a conversation that I had with Cottonwood’s pastor, Mike Fritscher, he began to tell me some of the history of their church and how God brought them to the place they are at now. Mike said that he spent time during the early years of his pastorate preaching on the glory of God and exploring this concept as a church. He talks about how we exist to give glory to God and this important aspect of faith has become central to the congregation’s life. When Mike invited Dr. Mike Stroope to come speak to the church about the possibilities of participating in mission, Dr. Stroope did not begin by talking about the nations, nor about the church, but about the glory of God. This he said was the foundation for the church’s life and work in the world, and it is this that is the impetus for its mission among the nations.

This theme is too big to go into here, and I still need additional reflection on its depth and implications, but in relation to the current discussion it began to make me think about how we see the church, and what we found it upon. It made me look back to the question we had in life group and the answers that we gave. I started to think that to give better answers to the question we should go back further to look at the foundations of the church. Without a proper understanding of the basis for the Christian community we cannot fully understand what it should be or be doing in this world. So I began to look back at some of our answers that we posed in our initial small group discussion and see if there was something behind them.

Two of the main themes that arose out of that discussion were the need for community and intimacy. These two are strongly related to one another as intimacy is a necessary part of developing community. As we began to talk about the need for intimacy Jacob prefaced our discussion saying that the Bible does not explicitly tell us that we need to be intimate with one another. The question of my mind then was what is our basis for the need for intimacy among brothers and sisters and Christ?

The first thing that came to mind was the Trinity. What better picture of intimacy do we have than in the relationships that exist within God himself? In the person of God we see Father, Son, and Spirit relating to one another in such intimacy that they exist as one. In the Trinity these three persons, although unique, cannot be separated from one another. God himself, then, becomes the pattern of how we are to relate to one another. God’s intimacy within the relationships that make up the Trinity become our basis for intimacy within the body of Christ.

Augustine, who was so influential in the shaping of theology and wrote the defining work on the doctrine of the Trinity for Western theology, described the Holy Spirit as the love that existed between the Father and the Son. The Spirit was said to come from both Father and Son and was that which binds them together. This same Spirit is the Spirit that Jesus sends at Pentecost, the Spirit that establishes and sustains the church, the Spirit that dwells in the lives of believers. In this way, believers and the church are drawn up into the Trinitarian life of God. The church exists not only on the basis of the salvific work of Christ, but also within God himself as we participate in his Holy Spirit. The church therefore finds its beginning and end, its foundation and goal within the God it serves. This and only this may serve as a sure foundation for the church, for God alone is eternal, enduring, and unwavering.

As God himself is the foundation for the church, the gathering of his people, it is to him that we must look for the example we are to follow. God himself shows us what it means to live in community. God shows us what it means to love, and how to love. God shows us these things in his relationship with his people Israel, and most clearly in his Son Jesus Christ. God is not hidden, but has revealed himself to us in Jesus. Because of this we may look to Jesus and see what God is like. It is because God has been revealed in Christ that we know how to reflect God.
Not only does God provide the basis for community as Trinity, but also provides the goal of community. Christian community, the church, exists not for its own end but in order to glorify God. The goal of the church is not to build up the church for the sake of the church, but rather is to become a community that glorifies God within a world of people who have fallen out of relationship with our creator.

Community for community’s sake is a dangerous foundation for the church. First off it is a selfish orientation that makes the church out to be the goal. If we develop a view of the church that makes community out to be the end then the church becomes about the church and maintaining the church becomes the primary goal. This is a blatant contradiction of the gospel as lived out in Jesus Christ. Jesus demonstrated a self-giving love and even though he had every claim to all the glory of God he claimed none of it, seeking instead to glorify the Father and love others above himself.

Reading through the gospel of John quickly reveals this dynamic of the Trinitarian relationship. Jesus says his task is to honor and glorify the Father. He keeps turning the focus back to the Father saying it is the Father’s will he has come to do. In turn Jesus says that the Father glorifies the Son. Look at just a selection of the words of Jesus: “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. (Jn 8:54), “If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.” (Jn 13:32), “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” (Jn 17:1). Then Jesus says that when the Spirit comes he will bring glory to the Son (Jn 16:14) We see that even within the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit act selflessly seeking to love and glorify one another.

The church is called to join in this activity of the Trinitarian life. The church is to bring glory to God and not point to itself. In following the lead of our Savior, the church takes on an orientation toward God. God is to be both the center and the aim of the church, the foundation and the goal. God, in Christ, stands at either end, the beginning and origin of this called out community as well as its purpose and that which pulls it forward.

Too many times the church suffers from the wrong orientation. We make it about us, the people, about our salvation, our holiness, our lives, our healing, our relationships, our families. Or we make it about the church itself, about membership, budgets, buildings, numbers, reputation. While none of these things are bad in themselves, they are not to be the basis of the church, they are not our aim. Jesus said “seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well,” (Mt 6:33). If we make the church about God and bringing glory to him, he will fill in the rest. We will see our lives changed, we will see the church transformed. Our focus, however, must not be on making these things happen but on our purpose to glorify God, for only God is able to truly bring about transformation in our lives and in the church.

As the church becomes more and more about God’s glory it cannot help but take up Christ’s mission in the world. The call to glorify God includes glorifying him among all nations. This summer at Cottonwood we read through the Psalms together as a body. The call to glorify God among the nations is one that is echoed again and again throughout this book. If we truly desire to see God glorified we cannot help but be driven into the world for the sake of God and his name.

It is important here that we mention that the way in which we glorify God is as important as bringing glory to him. Here I think of Christ and his self-sacrificing love that resulted ultimately in his death upon the cross. Christ brought ultimate glory to God through this love and sacrifice. We as the church are called to the same method of life, so that in embodying the love of Christ in the world we may glorify the God who is the author of that love. A pursuit for God’s glory then will create in us a love for others, a self-giving love that sets others ahead of ourselves.

To sum up at this point, the church should exist as a representative of God’s Trinitarian and loving nature. It should exist primarily for the glory of God, and then out of love for others. In this way the church finds its basis for community not in its own nature but in God and his call to the church that is to be lived out in the world.