True Community

"Yes, Jesus loves me … "

"And he walks with me and he talks with me …"

"This is my story, this is my song …"

These were some of the Christian songs I grew up with and which helped to form my initial understanding of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. It was all about him and me.

It was a good start, this solo-faith, but not good enough.

No one I remember coached me to consider the equally significant relationship between Jesus and us. I missed the biblical concept of community: that Jesus intended to fuse people together in redemptive groups where they could grow in godly character and generous living.

Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood once spoke "of consciously inadequate persons who gather because they are weak, and scatter to serve because their unity with one another and with Christ has made them bold."

I suspect John Baillie was thinking in that direction when he wrote: "It is impossible for men to meet with God and love him without at the same time meeting with and loving one another."

That sounds like community.

One day I revisited the oft-quoted words of Matthew 18:20 and gained new insight. "Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."

My conclusion? There is a sacredness that springs to life whenever people form a gathering in which the Savior is acknowledged as the supreme guest.

Community is about two or more people who make a deliberate choice not only to "accept Christ" (as we often say) but also to accept one another. To commit to each other in this context is no incidental event. It requires discipline, humility, selfless love, grace, and the heart of a servant. It demands staying power, flexibility, and loyalty. And when such a community is in place? Other familiar words of the Lord become relevant. "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Christ-defined community was the equivalent of the Nike swoosh or the bitten Apple in those early days.

No wonder the Bible inveighs against social exchanges such as gossip, intimidation, anger, and dishonesty. Jesus expects something special, an elevated quality of relationships among people who call him Lord. Community as Jesus modeled it ("as I have loved you") was and is supposed to be the brand of the Christian movement.

Think about this. Not preaching, not institutional expansion, but Christ-defined community was the signature image, the equivalent of the Nike swoosh or the bitten Apple in those early days.

When I was younger, I was certainly involved in many groups. Groups, I say, because they were rarely communities. There were Sunday school classes, prayer meetings, and teams committed to worthy goals. And these often (but not always) offered a certain level of satisfaction. In such programmatic structures, I did learn about the Bible, about prayer, about doing good things. I did become acquainted with a lot of people.

But I can't say I experienced many deep friendships. Rare was the occurrence of being invited into someone's heart where dreams, fears, calls, doubts, secrets, and uncertainties were stored. Rare was the feeling that anyone cared to know if these things were in me. The result? Loneliness. Sometimes a pseudo-Christian behavior. Embarrassing thoughts that had to be concealed for fear that one might be judged or exposed.

Looking back I am forced to admit that I cultivated an ability to keep most people at a convenient distance. And most of them did the same. Maybe you could call what we did secret-keeping, and that doesn't work in genuine community. I suspect that we had to work harder to maintain our secrecy than most people outside the faith do because we often claimed a kind of spiritual union which was rarely the reality.

Church-life for a lot of us was information (not community) based (You can be my friend if we agree on beliefs about doctrine and church polity). There was not a lot of tolerance for diversity on these matters. I became accustomed to debates, divisions, and so-called new church starts that were too often based more on contentiousness than God's missional intentions.

I can still hear my pastor-father saying, "There will be many times in your life when you will have to sever relationships because of doctrinal heresy." One day I found myself traveling with a Christian leader who had been vilified by my dad and others. It didn't take long for me to perceive a deep spirit of grace in him. I quickly discerned remarkable evidences of the nature of Jesus in the attitudes and conduct of this "heretic," and soon I concluded that I would gladly love to be like this man. I saw in him a picture of Christ.

"So, who are your friends?" I was often asked in my early pastoral years.

"Friends?" I'd respond. "My wife is my best friend. I don't have time for many more intimate relationships than that. I'm just too busy running this church … preaching these sermons … fixing people. Besides, my seminary professors told me that I wasn't supposed to have close friends if I wanted to be a strong leader."

Then in my mid-forties, my private world imploded, and I had to submit to a searching look at what had gone wrong and why. It didn't take long for my mentors to point out a glaring defect in my thinking. I had never pursued a place in a community where relationship began at heart-level. There was really no group in my life to whom I'd given permission to ask hard questions, offer rebuke, take a sounding of my spiritual depth.

Looking back, I suspect that if I had been a part of such a community, its members would have picked up on signals that something wasn't right with me, that I needed to account for myself.

When I became aware of my blindness on the matter of community, I moved to correct this missing part of my Christian life. But community-building is not something one makes happen overnight. It took time to acclimate myself to opening my inner life to the scrutiny of those who would love me enough to speak God's word into me.

What Is Community?

Community is the joining of two or more people who agree to organize themselves around the ways of Jesus and his command to love one another—caring, growing, and serving. Everyone in such a community is an equal participant; everyone seeks to grow; everyone builds in the lives of the others; everyone understands that the ultimate purpose of the community is to project the influence of the gospel into the larger world.

Elton Trueblood reflects on the power of community: "Simple people can be amazingly powerful when they are members one of another. As everyone knows, it is almost impossible to create a fire with one log, even if it is a sound one, while several poor logs may make an excellent fire if they stay together as they burn."

I see community in different forms. For example, I can count six different kinds of community in my life.

• First, there is the marriage of 53 years that I share with Gail. This is my most intensive experience of community. Loyalty to Jesus could be said to be our chief guiding principle. As much as possible, Gail and I work to know each other's heart. We try very hard to have no secrets from one another. We push each other to continuously grow: spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. And we take seriously the importance of such words as cooperate, grace, rebuke, generosity, and thankfulness. We not only love each other; we like and enjoy life with one another. This experience of community has changed (probably even saved) my life.

• Gail and I are a part of a small number of men and women who have met almost every month for nearly 25 years. When together, we usually eat, update our life stories, speak of recent sadnesses and joys, and challenge each other to stay strong and faithful to Jesus. We pray daily for one another and we frequently check up on those in the group who may be passing through a tough time. We've done more than a little crying together. And a lot of laughing too.

• I have a handful of male friends who are committed to serving Jesus as long as they have breath. When I am with these men (there are six of them), I feel very warmed. We kid around a lot, talk about ideas, books and newspaper columns, world issues. We are not timid about raising personal life-issues that require more wisdom than any one of us has by himself. Some months ago, for example, we set aside a day, skipped town, and spent the hours conversing about what aging is doing to each of us. A lot of personal strength eventuated from that occasion.

• Our church offers another broader version of community. I can't say that there is a large bandwidth of transparency when sitting in big rooms singing worship songs and listening to sermons. But we do look forward to connecting before and after meetings with people of all ages, following up with one another, sharing hugs, and exchanging words of cheer. We know they are there for us (and we for them) if there is a serious problem.

• Thirty years ago in northern Germany a group of nine youngish Christians (four couples and a single woman) formed a community they called the Weggemeinschaft (Community of the Way). They committed to live within walking distance of each other, to meet weekly for a common meal and the celebration of the Eucharist, and to support each other's spiritual development and giftedness. Together they vowed to make a mutual contribution to the Christian movement in Germany.

That contribution became the founding of a conference center called Dunenhof where Christians from all over German-speaking Europe come for Bible-based seminars, prayer retreats, and worship rallies. Years ago Gail and I started receiving annual invitations to speak at various Dunenhof events. The Weggemeinschaft embraced us as "junior" members of their community, and this wonderful international friendship has become one of the highlights of our Christian lives. They pour into our lives a depth of affection, spiritual insight, and courage. We dearly love these German friends.

• For several years Gail and I formed mentoring groups, each 14-16 in size. We sought out teachable people and invited them to our home on Monday nights for nine months. Our goal was to press into them the things we believed Jesus has taught us over these many years. We have taken special delight in these people and consider them to be sons and daughters in the faith. I have written about these efforts in a book called Going Deep.

These experiences in community caused me to appreciate Stanley Hauerwas's insight: "Christian community is not primarily about togetherness. It is about the way of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to himself. It is about disciplining our wants and needs in congruence with a true story, which gives us the resources to lead truthful lives. In living out the story together, togetherness happens, but only as a by-product of the main project of trying to be faithful to Jesus."

I've become convinced that the word community, like marriage, ought to be reserved for collections of people who make their relationship a very sacred trust. Community is at the core of the genuine Christian life. It is not an optional experience but is essential, actually indispensible, for a healthy Christian life. God has many things to teach us that probably could not or would not happen if one stuck to a solo experience of faith.

An old African proverb challenges my thinking. "Alone, I have seen many marvelous things, none of which are true." The subtle idea? Truth—God's voice—is best recognized and affirmed in community.

I've written on other occasions of my community of male friends, some of whom, a few years back, traveled with me to Switzerland for a week of alpine hiking. Each day, we walked the mountain paths for several hours and then returned to our hotel for evening dinner and conversation.

On one of those days, around noontime, we were walking a high mountain wanderweg, and one of the men, Al, suddenly sank to the ground. "I'm completely exhausted," he said. "I don't think I can go another step."

It was a frightening moment because no one was around and there was no way to summon assistance. For a while we sat together hoping that Al could regain some strength. And when we saw that he was doing better, I said to the other men, "You guys go on ahead. There's a mountain hotel (a burg haus) about two miles down the trail. See if you can get us some rooms there. Al and I will make it there by sundown."

When they were underway, I said to Al, "I've got an idea."

"Let's walk 100 steps slowly. And then we'll rest. When you're ready, we'll try another 100 steps and rest again."

Al agreed. I helped him to his feet and we linked arms. We walked a 100 steps and rested. Then another 100 steps and rested. And another 100 and another and another.

As we walked, I said, "Al, you're a brave man, you're a courageous man. You're going to get to that hotel faster than any of us expected."

Another 100 steps and rest.

"Al, let me sing this song for you." I sang a hymn we both knew. 100 more steps.

"Al," I said a bit later, "let me pray this prayer into your heart." 100, 200 more steps.

"Al, tell me about the day you decided to follow Jesus." He told me the story even though I knew it already. 100, 200, 300 more steps.

"Al, tell me about the moment you met Lena (Al's wife) and discovered you were in love with her." He did. 100, 300, 600 more steps.

"Al, do you remember the time you ran in the quarter mile championship at the Boston Garden?" Yes, he remembered, and he described the experience. 100, 700, 1000 more steps.

We reached the mountain hotel at sundown. As I thought about those hours on the mountain later that evening, I realized that I had never loved another man as much as I had loved my friend Al that afternoon. I had literally felt energy flowing out of me and into him as if it was a transfusion. During those hours we had been two ordinary guys, functioning as one. In those moments we were a micro-community.

For the next two years Al and I often spoke of that remarkable afternoon in Switzerland. Then one day Al told me that he had terminal cancer. "It looks like another one of those 100-steps-and-rest moments," he said.

When Al died, these same men and their wives joined Gail, Lena, and me at his gravesite. We surrendered our friend to God and thanked heaven for the many years of community we'd shared. It was deeply moving moment made possible because we had all invested years in each other's lives.

It is together that we learn what it means to be community, God's family.

Gordon MacDonald is editor-at-large of Leadership Journal.