07.05.06
Kingdom Community
Some friends and I have started an e-mail conversation about what constitues “the Church” and “Christianity”. In the interest of broadening the conversation, here are some of the thoughts I sent on to this group.
I think Jesus’ idea of “Christianity” could (should?) be summed up in the phrase “Kingdom Community”. Jesus came to usher in a new era of God’s Kingdom working through mankind through the building of a Spiritually linked and unified community (I capitalized Spiritually on purpose). I think deconstructed Christianity is extremely common where churches focus on a small portion of the gospel and preach soteriological minimalism (”What is the minimum requirement to get into heaven?” Pray a simple prayer, “believe on Jesus,” then live however you used to live. Pathetic. I hear the words “Lord, Lord!” echoing in the back of my mind…). This would have been abhorrent to the early church.
I’d like to see church become less about American individualism and salvific reductionism and more about wholistic, community minded discipleship. I’ve been thinking long and hard about what my part could be in bringing about this type of change in the spiritual community in which I find myself. Nothing earth-shattering yet, but for some reason I’ve found myself focusing on the Eucharist as having potential for redeeming this idea of Kingdom Community. Not sure if this is Spirit led, or just my thoughts, but I welcome input on this matter.
So please, input away.
adam said,
July 7, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I agree Jeff… and have one comment to add. The “church” is trying so stinking hard and writing so many books and selling so many models for trying to make this type of stuff ‘happen’ in the church. But I think that there may be one fundamental flaw with that… we’re trying to fascilitate change throught the structure… that way its more comfortable. Its almost as if we (myself included) are thinking “if we can just do church is this way, people will become the way we want them to without even knowing it.” In the end, I think making church look more wholistic (maybe with more focus on Eucharist, for example) will do precisely that… make the church LOOK more wholistic. We are so steeped in our own individualism, i think eventually we’ll have to grab people by thier hearts (or necks) and really challenge them about what the Kingdom is all about.
Make sense? What do you think?
Jeff said,
July 10, 2006 at 9:00 am
Well if all we do is try to find “cool, new ways” to “do communion” then, yes, it would be flawed (fatally). However, human beings are a body-spirit duality. Jesus understood this (he made us this way!) and so used parables and physical symbols to represent his teachings and truths.
I think our churches spend a lot of time doing things we are allowed to do rather than focusing on what we must do according to the command of Christ. What did Christ command? Love God, love your neighbor, make disciples, baptize them, teach them to obey, do this in remembrance of me… He didn’t say “preach thought provoking sermons,” or “sing rockin’ music.” It isn’t that these things are bad, but should these really be the primary focus of our corporate worship? Are these the primary means ordained by Christ through which we are to experience the presence, power and unity of his Spirit?
Rob said,
July 12, 2006 at 7:23 am
I am going to respond by indirectly answering your question. I want to comment on what I feel is missing from what I experience in my life/faith/church/whatever. (I know Jeff is thinking -he used the word experience, post-modernist fluff…) I think we are grasping for methods, models, programs to make church work for us. What seemed to exist in the 1st century church, and what was observed by paul in Phil 2 was some emalgamation of kenosis, koinonia, politeuesthe, doulos. I can’t explain what i’m thinking very well, but something along the lines of - God makes man, man gets the gift of free will to truely be able to voluntarily love God back. Man walks away (think individualism at it’s worst, walking away from the best deal you ever had because you wanted to do it your way). God sees/feel the loss of relationship and does something about it. Grace requires Christ setting aside power, privilege, comfort to bring us back into communion with Him, (in communion with him individually as well as a family- communally). Then God says if you love me feed my sheep. Do what I did for you to each other. To me that looks like a group of people who are interconnected in their lives, transparent with their feelings, struggles. Sacrificial in their approach to meeting each others needs. We don’t need to live in a commune, but we have to get close enough to one another to resemble the interconnected organism that should be the church. Contrasting that lifestyle/attitude/approach to western individualism we end up saying we want to follow jesus, and be like him, but we don’t want to change our lifestyle. We want to be americans, and add the spiritual dimention to our worldview. The problem is, following jesus as a church body is a change in worldview. The only people I know that have pulled that one off “went john the baptist on me” and left the country as missionaries. I seriously question whether people can lay down their own agenda and live a life of service and love and grace, and still be in the culture we live in. I’m not saying they are mutually exclusive, I just don’t know anyone who has pulled it off.
Rob
Lael said,
July 12, 2006 at 5:46 pm
I’ve done some thinking after the first round of emails, and this is my current conclusion; we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ and it doesn’t matter where or how you meet as long as you treat each other like you would a brother or sister. For example, my parents would not be thrilled if I started attending the episcopalian church down the street with the gay pastor. But I think that’s the same as if my parents (who are my brother and sister in Christ) didn’t like it if I hung out with my actual brother and sister. In turn I would ask my parents what their beef was with Rob and Frann and encourage them to get along better.
This question really requires a grad thesis response, so I’m going to stop here for right now. But generally I think you just need to do whatever you do with love.
Rob said,
July 13, 2006 at 7:35 am
A little addendum on yesterday’s comment. I feel like i need to answer the question more directly. I think what we are trying to do is get back to looking like the church when it was it’s healthiest. Although i could argue that the church today in china, korea, parts of africa are very healthy, and we should learn from their example; I think the early church is probably our best model. But i have to admit that trying to turn the western church into the early church sounds like alchemy. We want to turn lead into gold. I know that sounds harsh, but hear me out. The essense of the early church was commitment. People left their families, their jobs, everything to follow the way. It would be like a muslim converting to christianity. Once they made the decision there was no going back. No one would take them back. they HAD to become a dependant community for survival. So when i talk about essense i’m thinking of not only the lack of commitment to one another at a deep dependant level, but as americans the revulsion of the idea of being accountable to others financially, spiritually, etc. So when you ask the question of what model, method works to help us become like the “real” church I’m not sure what to say. Can any church model produce the copernican reversal that makes us want to act like jesus with reckless abandon. I don’t know, but i’m still thinking about it.
Rob