Communitas Christus
February 12, 2008 8:09 pm Blogs
Community. The ancient Christians identified themselves as a community with the symbol we use for our logo at The Resolved Church, what looks like the letter “P” on top of the letter “X.” They are the first two letters of “Christ” in Greek. Today there are all kinds of different communities…geographical communities, ethnic communities, sports communities, virtual communities and on and on. But what is community? Why do we need it or want it? Everyone is looking for it even in the most individualistic pursuits. A common unity. The sense of belonging. For many Christians community is a culturally combative thing or it’s a pretty non-existent thing. What kind of communities of Christ (communitas Christus) are we to have and how do we approach that at The Resolved Church?
A Definition of Community
First “community” in the Bible comes from the Greek word, koinonia, which most often gets translated as “fellowship” and means to have communion or partnership or association with a group of people. Sociologically, individuals are said to have an identity that forms in the context of a group(s). So who you are and who you become has a lot to do with who you spend time with. Psychologically, people are said to gain a “sense of community” based on membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. So the feeling of connection is something that depends on the level of a person’s involvement. Theologically, when a person becomes a Christian it is not just a individual joining to Jesus but a joining to Jesus’ church, universally throughout time and locally in a visible community.
An Approach to Community
At The Resolved Church we have three new mid-week community groups starting up this week, so I that’s why I’m writing about this. Our approach tries to keep a few things in mind.
One, we recognize that you can’t really have real community through just seeing people at church on Sunday. It’s just a reality that you will not really get to know anyone that well if you just see them briefly at an event once a week. So, though Sunday morning service is a sort of aspect of our community, it’s just that, it’s an aspect and alone it is not enough. A person will either always feel disconnected and/or end up creating a sort of dualistic, compartmentalized life, with Sunday church in a nice neat little box but not sharing life with any of those people at all. “Life.” You know eating, drinking, playing…spending time together.
Two, we recognize that you can go overboard with church people. Some churches have something going on almost every night of the week and you can become so involved that you barely have any time for your family, much less for getting to know and spending time with people who are not Christians. For those Christians, culture is always seen as “bad” and Christians are supposedly “good” and so churches try to compete with the “bad” activities in culture by always having an “Christian” alternative. In our understanding, everyone is bad, which is why we need Jesus, why we need each other to help us become like Jesus, and why we need to be active in non-Christian communities so that other people would also put their faith in Jesus. Thus, our goal and expectation for those who are part of the community of The Resolved Church is to regularly worship together on Sundays and then get together in a smaller group once during the week.
Three, we recognize that people are different and unique and so we currently allow for many different types of communities. There is a men’s group, a women’s group, a theology group, a dinner and video group, and now a mom’s group. Our only restrictions are that the groups are gospel centered (1 Cor 2:2) and that the leaders of these groups are under the covering and accountability of The Resolved Church leadership because that is the way Jesus designed his church (Eph 4:11-12). Communities groups where people are just getting drunk forsake the gospel and groups where the leadership is not under the covering of a local church forsake the called teachers of the gospel.
The Mission of Community
Lastly, the strength of a church is it’s community. It is so very easy for church to slip into simply being a Sunday service. When that happens “church” ceases to be the church and starts to be more like a cardboard facade of church. The church is a body of believers called by God out of darkness and into the light of Christ and from that point on is always calling others into the light of Christ. The mission of community is Jesus.
A church with true community is like the big cement pillars that support freeway overpasses and it is like the roads that go out into the city. The pillars make a church strong by supporting people inside the church and the roads make ways for people to get connected into our worshipping community, non-Christians and Christians alike. That is why some churches call all their mid-week groups “gospel” or “missional” communities because there is an inherent mission in community. As Ephesians 4:16 says, “the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
My heart and mission as Pastor is that as we continue to grow and build upward into Jesus that our mid-week community groups would grow outward numerically. Basically, I’d like to see there be more people going to our mid-week groups than Sunday service. Right now we’re sort of trying to funnel and teach people who come on Sundays to get into a community group. What needs to happen is for our community groups to grow to the point that we are trying to funnel people from our community groups into Sunday service. How awesome would that be!
I can’t tell you how excited I am about all the groups going on right now through The Resolved Church. Last year at this time we didn’t have a single one! Soli Deo Gloria. May Jesus continue “build his church” as the “gates of hell” continue to fail at trying to take it down (Mt 16:18).
- Pastor Duane
To read about The Resolved Church’s current community groups, check out the freshly updated page: www.theresolved.com/midweek