Friends of mine keep revealing to me through their lives how very shallow my vision of Christian community really is. Today I read an article that made that all too clear.
When we planted our (now closed) church we had some honest discussions about what we wanted it to be like. We talked about having a strong sense of community, and what that actually meant. It was an easy discussion when we were all imagining our preferred co-congregants. We all wanted to find some best friends for ourselves and our children. We also wanted sincerely to be a place for otherwise outcast people to be welcomed. But what that would look like was much more complex.
We really enjoyed having one older man (call him Jim) attend our church. Jim was friendly and positive, although he had a hard time communicating and we didn't always know what he was trying to tell us. We liked having him at church and small group. I miss him since we closed down last summer.
A more challenging thought was what would we do if Karla Homolka, who had recently been released from prison, showed up one Sunday. I know a church that had to deal with a halfway house for sex offenders on their block and had to decide how to wrestle with their desire for safety for their community and their desire for hope for these hated felons.
Community isn't easy when it is most real.
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1 comment:
It's funny how people are using the word community a lot these days, as if it's the new Christian catch-phrase, but like you said, that community extends to who they desire to be in their community. I'm reading some stuff by Jean Vanier these days about community, and it's very eye opening.
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