Episode Details

“I think you are a purist”, a friend said to me after I’d just given a presentation on ‘community and belonging’ at last week’s Reach Australia conference.

“Who me?” I lamely chuckled, but then immediately wished I’d said something more witty, like: “What would you prefer? An impurist?”

My talk at Reach was an expanded version of last week’s post, and majored on the same point—that Christian ‘community’ and ‘membership’ and ‘belonging’ is created and built by one thing only: the presence of Jesus Christ in our midst through his word.

It was a fun seminar, filled out very ably by Tim Clemens’s practical wisdom on what those theological themes mean for how churches can welcome and integrate new members, and disciple them to be part of a rich Christ-centred community.

When my friend expanded on his ‘purist’ comment, it was really to explore a question that had been raised in the seminar, as follows: granted that Jesus is the centre of our community, and the head of the body of which we’re members; granted also that this makes the word of Christ ‘dwelling richly amongst us’ the vital factor—how then do we think about the place of our actions in building Christian community? What about just going out to dinner with people, or playing board games, or painting the front room together? Don’t these sorts of things do anything for our ‘sense of community’? Would it be okay with the purist if we just hung out?

The first thing the purist would say is that human friendship, togetherness and relationship are good things in themselves. They don’t need any further justification or purpose. There’s no need to question our consciences about whether ‘hanging out’ is really okay if there are no Bible verses present.

This is especially so because many people today, sadly, are starved of the joys of human friendship and togetherness, particularly in the dislocated, isolating life of the modern city. To provide those simple pleasures (by hosting that dinner party or games night) is an act of real kindness—on the same level as helping an elderly neighbour with their lawns. In itself, it doesn’t create Christian community as such or build the body of Christ (as we’ve defined it), but it’s still an act of goodness and love.

However secondly, hanging out together in smaller informal settings creates a context in which Christian community can flourish. Tim Clemens fleshed this out very helpfully during our seminar. He pointed us to research that showed how people relate differently (and gain different things) in groupings of different size:

* In ‘public’ contexts (100+) we normally gather to engage together with something outside ourselves, like at a sports game or a concert or a church meeting;

* In ‘social’ contexts (20-70), we interact with an affinity group of some kind, sharing snapshots of ourselves—like at a party or at morning tea after church;

* In ‘personal’ contexts (4-12), we reveal more of ourselves, and likewise get to know others at a deeper level—as at a dinner party or a small Bible study group;

* In ‘transparent’ contexts (2-4), we can be open and vulnerable, and share our innermost thoughts and experiences—usually with our marriage partner or a close friend.

We can build the community of Jesus Christ in different ways in each of these contexts or social spaces, because we can share his word in various ways with different benefits at each level—from the sermon that challenges us all, to the series of conversations afterwards which teases it out, to the more personal conversations where we grapple with our own personal weaknesses.

So it’s not that hanging out with ten people automatically creates Christian community, and we shouldn’t confuse the joys of just being with other people with the unique thing that is Christian community. But unless we hang out with ten people