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(Editor's note: Christian author, speaker, and therapist Larry Crabb is featured in the Summer 2004 issue of Leadership. "I think the missing element in most pastors' lives is community," Crabb told us in this interview. We talked with Crabb about his high expectations for the church and a better model for caring congregations. Here are some highlights from the full-length print edition, plus some answers we couldn't squeeze into the magazine.)

Your model of community depends heavily on a congregation that appreciates open, caring interaction, where people "have the integrity to come clean." Can this be taught?

It starts with a recognition of impoverished theology. Eugene Peterson was scheduled to appear at a conference on spiritual formation. I phoned him to ask what he would speak on.

"Our Trinitarian theology in the evangelical church is thin," he said.

Until it gets thicker, we're not going to make much progress in this whole area of spiritual formation. God is in eternal community, a radically other-centered relationship where the Father is always saying, Isn't my Son something?! The Son's always saying, Look at the Father. And the Spirit is always saying, Look at Jesus.

Until we start pondering the mystery of the Trinity, we won't have a clue that we're a million miles from it in terms of community. People need to be overwhelmed by the Trinitarian community.

How do you put that in practical terms?

Are you familiar with the word perichoresis? It's a word fourth-century monks came up with to help laymen think about the Trinity: peri meaning "around" and choretic coming from "choreography." It's "dancing around." When (Eugene) Peterson teaches the Trinity, he says to visualize the Trinity having a square dance. Can you hear the rhythm of the Spirit and enter the dance?

I think it means God is having a good time. When we understand community like that, we will realize we're missing something here.

So how do we join the three-sided square dance?

I had lunch with Dennis Kinlaw of the Asbury Society about six months ago. I came away from our meeting in tears. I thought, Could I actually be like that someday? This guy was jovial, so broken and so happy about it.

He's in his eighties now, and recently lost his wife after a lot of suffering. He had tears in his eyes telling me about it. "What a privilege God gave me, revealing what the Father, Son, and Spirit are like with my wife in the middle of her pain." I thought, What are you talking about? I'd be mad that God wasn't curing her. But he got me all excited about the Trinity.

The community of the Trinity is the foundation for our spirituality, and I think that's where the renaissance of our evangelical society begins. We need to be gripped by it, think about it, ponder it, make it the topic of study and meditation. A marvelous book, Experiencing the Trinity by Darrell W. Johnson (Regent College Publishing, 2002), is the best short book I've read on the topic. It reduces all this high-level stuff to an incredibly readable level. If I were a pastor, I think I'd ask my small groups to read it.

Do we have to reach 80 and experience suffering to understand this truth about the Trinity and community?

I think brokenness is a lifelong journey. It isn't something you get past. I think it's a continuing deepening revelation of your own impotence without the Spirit. And I think that's why you meet people in their eighties, godly men and women, who say, "I think I'm just beginning to grasp the gospel." Because brokenness is an ongoing journey. It's all about Christ. We can all say it at age ten, but at age 80, you say it with a little more power. I turn 60 this summer, and that's been my experience.

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