There are two aspects to walking a Christian path following after God, both important. One is your personal relationship with Jesus, with God—and that is always your focus and first priority. The second is your relationship with people both within and without faith community. But there is a special and necessary relationship with the people within faith community.
So let’s speak more of Christian community, the Body of Christ—the church, if you will. I’ve certainly had my bills of particulars against some faith communities, some churches. In Being Found and elsewhere, I’ve spoken of their failings and the difficulty of finding authentic faith life and people through whom you can grow with God. But we have not spoken more substantively of what that faith or church community might look or act like. In other words, when is a faith community or church the Body of Christ? What essential role has church to play in who we are becoming in God? I think you should expect to find the following:
- The Great Commandment is lived. Through Jesus, they are open to and receive God's unqualified love for them, and they return that same love to Him with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength, all that they are, and they allow that love to flow over to all people, everywhere—even those they dislike or who dislike them, even their enemies.
- Through prayer, study and meditation on Jesus' life and teaching, they embrace God's invitation to be more like Jesus, to model their lives after His. They seek a deepening knowledge of Jesus and a singular relationship with Him as Lord and spiritual master, as a human revelation of the divine nature and teachings of God, and as a human example of how to live according to those teachings.
- Through Jesus, and within His context of final judgment, they take into their hearts His teaching that we do not serve Him if we do not serve the poor, the sick, the stranger in our land, and the prisoner. The church community places its highest service priority on serving God by serving the least of our brethren: providing clothing, food and drink to the poor and unable; providing shelter and help to strangers in our land; attending, ministering to, and treating the sick; and visiting the prisoners.
- The Spirit of God is acknowledged present and mediating all prayer, worship, teaching and study—and also in all work, planning and decision making. Christ’s spiritual presence and example are invoked to lead and mediate the nature of community interaction, outreach, and service within and without the faith community.
- People are led to understand their spiritual gifts and abilities, and every person God brings into community is encouraged to take his or her place in the worship, prayer, ministry and work of the church, that God’s plan for each might be honored. To fail to do so is to deny the purposes and plans of God one person at a time.
- Through Jesus, and with His compassion, humility and gentleness, they allow their lives and their walk with Him to be their statement of Christ and Christianity in the world, their weaknesses and failures notwithstanding. But, allowing humbly and generously for those human failings, the church community nonetheless earnestly desires and most often reflects the characteristics of Jesus.
- Yet, they recognize as important that part of Jesus' ministry that was intolerant of self-righteousness, loveless legalism, and judgment lacking compassion and mercy. For all those reasons, Jesus assailed the Pharisees, priests and scribes as self-important religious leaders who had lost their way with God. The Christ-centered church community is vigilant to avoid identity with or indulgence of today's Christian Pharisees and legalists, but also the divisive political operatives and other Christians for whom greater identity in God through Christ is not their apparent motivation or the apparent basis for their leadership orientation.
- There is a clear sense of real and full Christian community. Families and individuals share their lives together, affirming, caring for, supporting and helping one another.
It is in places like that where God can speak to you more broadly and clearly through the example and teaching of others, through the exercise of spiritual gifts, through shared faith-life together. It is there and through these people that you can grow in knowledge, in prayer life, and faith—and there that you will learn to keep faith life in balance. It is there that you are affirmed, supported or redirected, held, healed and restored. It is there that you become part of a living Body of Christ, and grow closer in identity with God.
Of course, these are ideals. And as with most biblical ideals, we—even those most faithful and prayerful among us—are not equipped to always live up to them. And as collections of such people, neither are our churches. We all fall short sometimes, in some ways. But some fall very short much of the time; it is their very identity. They are the ersatz faith communities, the cultural shelters for the self-righteous and those too often given to judging others, for the narrow-minded who cannot suffer different people or brook differing views. They subordinate the Great Commandment to their own definition of a great commission. They break God’s heart. They should be avoided, or left as soon as it is clear who they are.
Look for the better places, for God’s more humble, grateful and loving people. For you can still encounter God among and through His people in many authentic faith communities. And they remain the best place, the most reliable place, to encounter something of God’s love, forgiveness and compassion, even if shared imperfectly and inconsistently.
In fact, our faith communities are usually the only way to find and grow with God in an affirmed, accountable and serving way. But yes, there are times when we are called to the desert, the dark night experiences, or to a more solitary experience with God, sometimes for extended periods, even years. But for most of us, most of the time, our faith walk should include the company of others in faith community, in church life.
First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
