Most of my close friends moved away from me while we were living in Kentucky.1 I didn’t want them to but God kept calling them out. Kentucky was an unexpected place for us to converge, but we gathered and bonded and then we dispersed. The shocking thing is that we’ve kept in touch remained friends. We Voxer. We FaceTime. We travel to see each other. We talk about cultural issues, theological arguments, our kids, movies. Those friends keep me sharp.2 I think better. I have a broader view of the world. I’m more empathetic. One of these families traveled to our house from Florida in June and we showed them all over town. I still have a sticky note she left me hanging on my monitor.
For all the good that comes from these friendships, and there is too much good for me to share it all, they don’t meet all the facets of biblical community.
If you’re shocked, What? Why not? Hang with me. If you rolled your eyes at the idea of biblical community, stick around for a minute.
God calls a people. He calls Abraham and Sarah to make a family out them. That family becomes a nation that God calls before him as a people. When he calls individuals, it is in service to the people as a whole. Even those individuals know God as one of the people of God. Moses leads the people out of Israel and is, in fact, one of the Hebrews though he was raised as an Egyptian. Huldah speaks God’s truth to the people that she lives with because she is part of them. In the New Testament, we see the rise of the church in the nation of Israel, and it is again a people, though in this case a people of mixed nationality and ethnicity, beliefs and cultures. Elders are called up from their own communities. Transformation happens in lives because of the work of the Spirit among the people who saw them every day. The Scriptures were read communally because people rarely had their own scrolls. The rituals of the faith were communal, both in the life of Israel and the church.
God has never been interested in a “it’s just me and God over here” relationship.3 Knowing God is personal but it’s not private, in the words of one of my seminary profs.
Remember when I told you that Biblical community isn’t just the friendships that have sustained me for years? Yeah, there’s a reason for that. It’s easy to be friends with people who are like you. Maybe they look like you, maybe they don’t—but in that kind of friendship there’s a kinship. They are kindred spirits as Anne Shirley would say. There’s something inside both of you that is similar and it makes it easier to be friends. This is why you hit it off with some people and don’t with others. But the people of God isn’t made up of people like you or people you hit it off with. It’s not a club. The people of God is supposed to be where everyone finds a place, everyone ministers to one another, everyone is loved and known. And that means we are going to have to do community with people who are not like us and people we don’t feel a natural affinity too.
This is harder to do in our culture than ever. Where I live4 there are 8,000 churches5 and you can probably visit them one by one until you find people who are mostly like you. People who think like you, vote like you, eat the food you do. But that is not the point of church. The gospel is supposed to be the common denominator of the people in our church community. We’re supposed to give up our preferences, consider others above ourselves, and go out of our way to be home for one another.
This starts to sound much less enjoyable, doesn’t it? Why do I have to continually spend time with people who might annoy me?
The Bible refers to God’s people as a family. We need a good theology of being siblings for many reasons but this one of them. Paul reminds Timothy to treat the older women as mothers, older men as fathers, and everyone else as brothers and sisters.6 That changes how we treat one another. This also means that everyone should find a family. If you aren’t married, here’s a family for you. If you are married, here’s a family for you (because you’re going to need it. One person can’t sustain you.) If you’re divorced, if you’ve been abandoned, if you’ve been cast out, here’s a family for you. If you’re in need, here are people who will show up to support you even if you’re getting on their nerves. That’s what family is supposed to do. Family is commitment. Family is sacrifice. We’re supposed to be a new family.
My guess is most of us don’t make space for other people in this way. We are consumed with our own needs and wants and questions. This will require a reorientation.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to access biblical community. I work with groups as part of my job at our church and we are constantly holding the tension between organizing community and organic community. How to teach people how to behave in groups and what groups are for. How to structure (or not!) the content and aim of the groups. People are complicated and groups of people are most complicated. The way we live and do church in America can make it even more complicated. But I can raise some questions for you to consider:
~is it possible for you to gather in a committed fashion with believers who live geographically near you?
~is it possible for you to know your neighbors, believers or not?
~do you have people (not your besties) who you will show up for in the middle of the night, who you will pray with, who you will hold accountable, and who will do the same for you?
~does your community make a family for people who do not have a family?
~does your community make a new family even for those who have a family?
~do these people help you understand what it means to follow Jesus and vice versa?
~how committed can you be to putting down roots in a place and staying in people’s lives?
~how open are we to sharing our homes and our spaces with people who are not in our nuclear family?
~does your church community serve your neighborhood? Does it matter that you are there? Do you bear witness to the work of God?
My aim is not to tell anyone the best way to do something. That would be silly. In fact, I feel convicted myself at how much of my life revolves around the people I just really like a lot. This is space for us to reflect and consider. What do we know from God’s word and then what do we do with it? What do these principles look like in the context of our actual lives?
I’d love to hear your stories of community if you want to share in the comments.
Except Sarah. I moved away from her and that’s still the worst part of having left Kentucky.
To use this biblical reference.
Though I did have someone tell me this when we were talking about church.
Lynchburg, Virginia.
This is not an exact number but it feels accurate.
1 Timothy 5:1-2.