Sarah Arthur
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Mike King
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Andy Root
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Chris Folmsbee
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Lilly Lewin
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Dave RahnChange is the artistic skill required of leaders. Widely effective leaders have learned to wield their creativity in multiple settings and with a variety of audiences.Those of us in youth ministry commonly concentrate our energies on the transformation that Jesus Christ brings about in the lives of the young people with whom we work. That is, for most of us, the energizing payoff that we signed on for. The more we understand how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to bring about this sort of miraculous change, the more fruit we can expect from our ministries. I don’t want to sneeze at this most significant of changes. In Youth for Christ, we want our ministry site leaders to practice what we call the 5 Essentials. These biblically derived principles are intended to bring about the changes we all care most about; they are true whether we are working with students through Campus Life or with teens locked up in jail in our Juvenile Justice Ministries. In a nutshell, we want our leaders to enlist lots of people in frequent and specific prayer for our work. We want to initiate uncommonly loving relationships with teens by pursuing them and engaging them in their world. We believe that in our Dr. Phil, advice-giving culture, we need to do a better job of teaching God’s Word and coaching kids to apply it in their lives. Much prayer, much love, much use of Scripture—these three Essentials bring about Spirit-graced life change for would-be followers of Jesus Christ. The remaining two Essentials call us into a different kind of ministry site leadership. We ask our staff to be catalysts for collaboration among churches and like-minded partners in hundreds of communities around the country. Our goal is to help bring about the kind of unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17—that which testifies to the reality of the one true God in our midst. Together we hope to raise indigenous young leaders and empower them to multiply their influence. Both of these Essentials bring about change of another order—they aspire to reshape the very fabric of a community, something very different from helping individual teens through prayer, love, or teaching the Bible. It requires an unusual vision to see how local churches can operate beyond their existing parish boundaries to come through as the body of Christ on behalf of young people who are far from God. Those who lead change that mobilizes other people must possess an inspiring vision and compelling character. For example, humility positions leaders with the attitudes needed to listen and learn from others. In our YFC culture, we need to appreciate diversity of perspectives and others’ uniquely valuable contributions. Many who work in churches realize that they activate a willingness to change among parents and congregational stakeholders after they demonstrate a willingness to hear concerns, accommodate additional dreams, and even adjust their timelines so that there is genuine buy-in for the directional change being advocated. Youth ministry is most simple when it represents a transaction between two people. “You wanna help me change?” a kid might ask. Permission granted. But just try to drop the weekend retreat your church has “always” done from your schedule one year. Efforts like these reveal that there is always a definable group of people whose ownership is necessary for change to take place. Effective leaders see who needs to be on board, recognize what flexibility is necessary to secure their support, and bend like weeds to seal the deal. Pure artistry.
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.slantChris Folmsbee
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 .slantScot McKnight
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.slantDave RahnI agree that I live in a post-Christian world, but it may be arguable that the world is post-Christian. Intelligentsia who live in Europe and America certainly seem to have gotten a bit too big for their Christian faith britches. Sometimes I can feel the condescension—like those of us who love the Lord should have outgrown our small-minded worldview by now. But there are plenty of places in the world where such a perspective is rightfully dismissed for the self-aggrandizing pap that it is. The experiential reality of many second- and third-world Christians is far too dynamically derived from the Holy Spirit of God to be threatened by post-modern arguments. And therein lies the apologetic key for us all. There are a few tests to lay on any thought framework that espouses to be a worldview contender. Is there internal consistency with the different parts of how life is explained? This particular test may be a bit out of favor now that modernity is slipping below the horizon. Christianity can get a good grade, but it’s probably not the SAT score we want to wave around just now. Another question to ask is whether a worldview actually corresponds to observed reality. This is where the smart guys outthink themselves. They can do so much reframing of experience that the makeover ceases to look anything like the lives that we live. The Christian explanation for things, properly understood, does a fabulous job describing life as we know it. And the dominant common story line that needs to be satisfactorily explored is that of human suffering. In fact, church leaders and authors like Tim Keller and Ajith Fernando have sweetly shown us how biblical truth more completely and honestly explains our human condition than the package of self-deluding half lies trotted out in contemporary culture. We shouldn’t start with headline-grabbing atrocities because that’s not the source of our problems. Sin is. And authenticity is an important enough value that there seems to be a new willingness to reckon with how the ego-dominated destructive (self and other ways) tendencies in our souls wreak micro- and macro-havoc on our world. Of course, there are still some hideous presentations of the Christian faith on the scene that apologists have to overcome. The inclination to try to correct our public persona by controlling our image rather than reforming our substance has been, in my estimation, disastrous. Our neighbors in the world laugh derisively when we embrace such tactics. The collective evidence testifies that a spin-crafted faith—so fundamentally different from the first-century transformational powerhouse that Jesus launched—is impotent and irrelevant. The last question to ask of any worldview contender is whether the outlined solutions actually work to overcome real-life challenges. We who love and follow Jesus know that he is the fundamental answer—the way, the truth, and the very source of life itself. It’s when our lives fail to demonstrate this coherence and integrity that our apologetic efforts will be dead in the water. Wherever Jesus’ people are ego-burying, cross-carrying, love-sharing servants, the gospel advances. The most polished and well-rehearsed presentations never can win hearts like humility, transparency, and honesty do. God’s grace in Christ Jesus in us is the juice that needs to be tasted. Our fully surrendered lives are now and always have been the foothold the Holy Spirit uses to guide men and women into truth.
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 .slantSteve ArgueWhen one thinks of culture, it’s easy to default toward focusing on ethnicity, and though a salient perspective, culture cuts through many storylines, including gender, socio-economic status (SES), language, age, etc. Attempts to understand people in a cultural context are often done with generalizing descriptions (e.g., parents are out of touch; adolescents are having more sex). While such descriptions may raise awareness of potential themes associated with a particular cultural context, generalizable descriptions may also create stereotypes that do violence to the uniqueness and complexity of each individual. All races, all ethnicities, all genders, all adolescents, all youth pastors are not the same, which makes defining cultural contexts complicated. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz has been helpful to me as I have reflected on my own and others’ contexts. First, he has reminded me that it is impossible for me to describe a cultural context objectively. In other words, I cannot observe something there without bringing the here of my own embedded culture into the experience. Thus, all descriptions have a there/here dynamic to them. This challenges me to reflect on my own assumptions and cultural frames, raising sensitivity for how these affect the way I see the world. As for me, I am a white, Euro-American, male, married, middle-class, midwestern heterosexual. I have known privilege economically and educationally. I am a child of divorced parents, and I am a brother, a father, a husband, and a friend. These frames shape what I notice, what I miss, and how I interpret both. They help and hurt my ability to understand others. Geertz has been helpful to me in a second way. His work challenged ethnographers to pursue a thick description of the cultures they chose to represent. A thick description does not merely describe others’ actions but seeks to understand the meanings behind them. Seeking thick descriptions, then, cautions me from making generalizations or judgments on others’ actions based on my perspectives. Instead, it challenges me to understand others as unique individuals who frame their world on their terms, not my limited generalizations. This has dramatic consequences for the way one does youth ministry. Misunderstanding of the multiple, complicated cultural frames and poor self-reflection of one’s own cultural biases mixed with religion can create a dangerous cocktail of oppression. Often, parents are perceived as the enemy (thus blamed or ignored), and adolescents are seen as unspiritual (and thus coerced and manipulated in Jesus’ name). The youth worker must remember that with any encounter with the other (especially adolescents), he is entering into a cross-cultural experience. She moves from teacher to learner; leader to fellow journeyer; life-changer to the one whose life is changed. The there/here encounter of one to another brings about transformative change in both, allowing the youth worker to be a faithful advocate of adolescents. And so my cultural context is continually changing as I interact with others. The there/here is perpetually familiar and foreign to me, thus requiring great discipline for me not to default to my unchecked assumptions. As an adult, I’m committed to understanding children and adolescents, resisting the urge to superimpose my adult history, perspectives, and thinking upon their existences. This requires the study of sociological and developmental issues and slowing down long enough to have a conversation with each of them. As a Euro-American, heterosexual male, I’m committed to being more sensitive to the reality that, as my Taiwanese friend said to me (rightly), “the world was made for me.” Most of what I have accomplished has been supported by social structures that have set me up for success. And so I’m committed to learning more about what it means to resist systemic inequality as I learn from the stories of others’ ethnic, orientation, and gender perspectives. This is as much of a confession as a commitment. For I know that in the midst of my good intentions, all these cultural perspectives slip off the radar when I get tired, want my way, or when I’m afraid to enter into another’s world. While a blanket confession doesn’t do justice to the people I have failed, I hope it’s a promise to continue to see each person as created in the image of God, worthy of being understood and valued as an individual. |
 .slantDanny KwonWhen I consider my cultural context for ministry, my initial and consistent response is that it is youth. In other words, teenagers are my cultural context for ministry. In fact, I have always been a proponent of the idea that by definition, youth ministry is across culture. Culture is often defined in relation to the values, beliefs, norms, and symbols that are common to a specific group of people. Other aspects in defining culture are the shared qualities that make a group unique, or customs and the way of life of a group of people. Using this definition, one can easily understand that teenagers are a unique culture in themselves. This was something I realized again recently as I was trying to get a better grasp of the values, beliefs, norms, and symbols of my youth group students. Similarly, even as an 18-year youth worker, I still fall short in completely understanding youth culture. For example, in some recent time with our youth, I thought I was so “hip” in talking about Lady Gaga until I realized that she is not even on the radar for many of them. Similarly, in talking to my students about America’s Best Dance Crew, I realized I was talking about season 3 when they were discussing the most recent season 5. All this is not to say we need to be experts about youth culture. That is a tall order. Rather, in considering both a missional and missiological perspective, I believe it is important to at least have an empathetic understanding of youth culture and to have a compassion and acceptance of their values, beliefs, norms, and symbols. In doing so, we take a great step forward in loving and ministering to our students by hearing the stories and narratives of our teenagers and letting them find a place of acceptance and connection with ours. And ultimately, in nurturing this connection, we participate in God’s work of connecting God’s story to the stories, narratives, and culture of our teenagers. While understanding youth as a culture is a most vital aspect in considering my cultural context for ministry, I cannot deny the importance of my cultural context of ministry from an ethnic heritage point of view. Moreover, when one considers cultural context, many people are probably thinking of it in these terms, whether consciously or unconsciously. Ethnicity most often deals with identity with or membership in a particular racial or national group and the observance of that group’s values, beliefs, norms, and symbols. Hence, being the son of immigrants from South Korea and serving in the local church context at a Korean church, the ethnic identity and culture of being Korean is a big part of racial and cultural makeup of many of our youth and adults. This ethnic distinction forms a big part of our culture as a people and church, as well as impacting and affecting our Korean youth group students in distinct and unique ways as far as the issues they deal with. Ultimately, what is the importance of all this? First, my wife and I always resonate with the words attributed to Martin Luther King Jr, who noted that eleven am on Sunday is the most segregated hour in America. Hence, even at our Korean church—and especially within our youth group comprised of many Korean students—we hope that we would not be just an ethnocentric ministry. This means basically that our Korean ethnic context would not place our ethnic context at the center of our world, thus consciously or subconsciously preventing us from understanding and ministering to people of other cultures. Thus, within our youth group, we are intentional to minister to students from the local community and schools from diverse backgrounds. For youth ministries and youth workers, I would just ask you to consider this as something to cherish and value. Moreover, if by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, minorities will be the majority population in America, then being open to people of diverse backgrounds is becoming a necessity. Hence, if you see a person of a different ethnic heritage come to your youth group, be sure to value and endear yourself to the values, beliefs, norms, and symbols that have shaped their narrative and story, both as a teenager and as someone of distinct ethnic heritage. Ultimately, in doing so, we are not just learning about their cultural context but also loving our neighbor and participating in God’s Great Commission. Moreover, we are modeling an eschatological view of God’s kingdom for our students that will hopefully lead to seeing God’s “kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
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.slantDave RahnThe question of cultural context is, essentially, a question of awareness. As such, I find it slightly insufficient and generally uninteresting. Why is that? I suspect it’s because I’ve hung around too many circles where participants unpack cultural context for one another with dispassionate objectivity. They’re like Joe Friday on Dragnet: “Just the facts, ma’am.” It’s an exchange of academic knowledge, too often disconnected from any personal obligation. But we followers of Jesus at any moment in time are accountable to be faithful to that which God has taught us. So my boredom evaporates when I get the chance to scrutinize those particulars of cultural context that are relevant to my assignment from the Lord. Years ago I led a Campus Life outreach at a large local high school in Indiana. The school was the only one in the county, the result of a recent consolidation that was pretty controversial for some residents. My ministry was only mildly effective, in part because I was inclined to see my work with and through the 50-60 meeting attendees rather than the 2,000 who attended the school and the thousands of others who were stakeholders in this educational enterprise. For each of my next three Campus Life assignments, my sense of clarity about what I was called to do drove me increasingly deeper into the cultural contexts of the respective schools. At rural Norwell, I learned to get in touch with how the wider school population lived; these were, after all, the kids I was trying to reach with the love of Christ. Elmhurst was an ethnically diverse blue-collar city high school without much community pride. When I began South Side’s inner city ministry, I encountered more racial and economic division than in any place prior. Each school had kids who needed to know Jesus, and though they were within 25 miles of one another, they each represented extremely different socio-cultural worlds. And I cared about understanding those cultural contexts because I was convinced the Lord wanted me to concentrate my mission efforts at those locations. As layered and complex as those contexts were (and are), the assignments at least seemed doable. By pounding the neighborhood pavement, hanging out in the parks and fast-food places where kids were drawn, moving through the schools, and getting connected to community activities, businesses, and churches, I could get immersed enough in the local culture to identify with those God had called me to serve. But the Lord also opened up my eyes and heart to a wider vision, and the leadership range of my life and ministry kept getting bigger. As I took on responsibility for ministry in five counties, I realized that when it came to particular cultural contexts, I had to defer to the expertise of those who were already embedded in their communities. My own relevant questions of culture began to shift in accordance with the scope of leadership to which I was being called. Nowadays, I hang out at airports and LaQuinta hotels and rental car agencies. My sense of local connectivity and context has never been lower. My wife and I feel the loss of natural community that comes with such a life. But as before, I am trying to understand the cultural context that is most relevant to the assignment I have from the Lord. So I work hard to get to know both the landscape of church and youth ministry in America and the culture of Youth for Christ/USA, the national organization which I help lead. I know that the Lord’s current call on me is to multiply empowered leaders who are called to lead the charge on behalf of Jesus’ love for lost kids in their own communities. They get to concentrate, to dive deep, and deal in particularities. In my national role, I can offer limited observations about whatever common cultural contexts may exist. Perhaps I can point out general patterns that are helpful or wrangle in public discourse about issues important to our mission. But it is their expertise that needs to be cultivated and unleashed in very specific locales if our evangelistic mission is to be effective. I sure hope that my contributions make a difference to those distributed leaders and staff I serve because—to my way of thinking—they’re having all the fun.
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.slantMike KingIn his 2006 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Bono referred to a spiritual leader to whom he made constant requests for prayers and blessings on behalf of his works of justice around the world. Bono declared, “This wise man asked me to stop. He said, ‘Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.’” So what is God doing? What is God’s mission? The term missio dei (mission of God) implies that God has a purposeful plan. Karl Barth emphasized the reality that God is at work, actio dei (the action of God). We often think of mission when we discuss the mission and activity of God, which, unfortunately, is so enmeshed in a Western mindset of saving the heathen. The script of ministry mixed with colonial ambitions has wreaked havoc throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. The mission of God must be understood by the church to be much more than soteriological concerns of the church to get people saved. God’s mission is much broader than expansion of the church. No doubt, the church is called to participate directly in God’s mission and activity. However, the activity and mission of God extend beyond the life of the church. God’s mission doesn’t exist because of the church; the church exists because of God’s mission. God’s work in the world has many participants beyond the church. The church must do a better job of bearing witness to the reality that others are participating in God’s mission, even those participants who may not even be aware of their cooperation with God’s activity. The mission of God also must be understood as an attribute of the triune God. The Western church theological focus has been on “sentness”—the Father sending the Son, the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit, and the Father, Son, and Spirit sending the church. To grasp the beauty of our triune God in relation to the mission of God, we must recover the Eastern Church Trinitarian emphasis on God’s radical communality and the movement toward restoration and shalom. We are being invited to participate in God’s mission and activity through our triune God’s perichoretic activity of relational and complete restoration. As followers of Jesus, we must see our roles within our church communities to participate fully and passionately in God’s overarching mission with the eschatological hope of the absolute reign of God and the restoration of all things. When our future meets God’s eschatological reality, what will this new earth and new world be like? When God’s mission is complete, when God’s reign is on earth as it is in heaven, what will that look like? What is our hope? To answer this, we must focus on Jesus Christ. The best way for us to understand the manifestation of missio dei is to see it Christo-centrically. Through God’s special revelation—Jesus Christ—we are restored and reconciled to God, to ourselves, to others, and to the entire creation. Not only are we redeemed through Jesus Christ’s salvific work but also all things—including all creation groaning for restoration—will be made new. Through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s ultimate plan and purpose for his entire creation was made manifest and was accomplished in an already/not-yet reality. With Christ as the first fruit, we believe there will be resurrection. There will be healing and peace among people. There will be justice for all. No more hunger, suffering, and death. There will be a return of shalom. We must broaden the vision of our young people to understand that they are being invited to cooperate with God’s mission. We are co-agents in God’s restorative work. We are Jesus’ followers engaged in God’s missional activity; we are his friends and co-laborers. This message is so much more compelling for young people to give their lives to. Focusing primarily on getting young people saved so they can go to heaven when they die is insufficient to ignite the imagination of this generation to order their lives in abandonment to God’s entire, encompassing, restorative mission. We must engage in Christian formation of young people that leads to a more robust understanding of God’s overarching mission and activity throughout all creation. This understanding must involve a proper view of the church’s role within this mission as truly unique and special because God planned it that way. But they must also have the spiritual maturity to discern that God’s mission is greater than being bound exclusively within the scope of the church. We must know when to point to those outside the church and to activities outside the church (even in other religions) and bear witness to God’s mission and activity by proclaiming, “There it is.” |
.slantScot McKnightThe year was 369 AD, and the land was the eastern portion of what we now call Turkey. The church leader of the area was Basil, son of wealthy Christian parents and brother to two future saints, Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina, his sister. The problem was a brutal, enduring famine that was soon stretching humans to their limits. Parents went to bed wondering if it might not be wiser to sell some of their children in order to keep some of the others alive and then wondered if they could ever look the remaining children in their eyes following such a profound breach of trust. What to do? was the question Basil, now bishop, was asking himself daily. Basil the Great answered that question by tapping into the answers he had absorbed so deeply to a different question: What is God doing in this world, and what does God want of us, his people? Answering that question enabled Basil to answer the more pressing question. Basil, if you don’t know the story, began to sell off the acres and acres of land his parents had passed on to him, and when the needs became more pressing, he created the first-ever Christian community, called The New City and eventually known as Basiliad, a place for kingdom living. At the Basiliad, described as a koinobios, a “life in common,” lepers were nursed, the poor were provided for, the hungry were given food, and the Lord was worshiped and served. Living with and for others was the only reasonable response to the breakouts of need Basil faced, but living with and for others was grounded for Basil in what he knew God was like and what God was doing in this world. The mission of God shapes the mission of God’s people. But Basil knew that God’s mission didn’t begin at creation. He knew it never began but always was. This great Cappadocian theologian was one of the architects plumbing the depths of how to understand God as three-in-one and one-in-three. The foundational term used then was the Greek word perichoresis, which describes the mutual indwelling and the mutual inter-penetration of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Let’s get this down to manageable levels now: perichoresis is the idea that the Father’s life was with the Son and the Spirit and that the Father’s life was for the Son and the Spirit; and the same is true of the Son and the Spirit. When all is said and done, the Trinity becomes an endless dance of love for the “others.” The mission of God begins in the perichoresis of the Trinity. It follows, then, for Basil, that he as leader and his people as followers of Christ were to dwell with those in need and to live for those in need; which they did, and none did it better, and none gave up more, and none sacrificed himself more willingly than this great leader of the church. Basil set the tone and the example, and the Basiliad has become a living testimony of what God’s people look like when they live out the mission of God in this world: they live with one another and for one another. Perhaps it surprises some today, but it would not have surprised Basil that the final scene of the Bible describes God’s people as they are supposed to be. That scene is found in Revelation 21, where we discover that God’s people finally find themselves exactly where they are supposed to be and doing exactly what they are designed to do; and that place is a city, the New Jerusalem, and what they are doing is dwelling with God and for God and with one another and for one another. This city, and I see no reason not to call it the City of God, descends from the heavens to the earth, showing us that life on the earth matters eternally and that what we do now will shape what we can do then. This city is God’s dwelling among his people, and this city is itself the new creation (21:5). This city is perfectly proportioned and made of the best of materials for the best of people because God wants his people to dwell in joy and peace and love. But what is perhaps most powerful is that the city has no temple because the temple is the Lamb, Jesus himself. The mission of God is for you and me to be with God and to live for God and to be with one and another and to be for one another, and all of this we do with Jesus Christ in the center. He is our temple, and he is our light.
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.slantDave RahnLiving missionally is all the rage today. Makes me wonder if God is impressed that we are getting something so important finally dialed in. Without presuming to speak for the Lord, I do wonder why it’s taking us so long to calibrate what it means to live into the mission of God. This is not a new idea. This mission of God is rooted in the creation story. We humanoids were designed to have our lives centered around the one true God, Creator of heaven and earth and all things in between. By being connected in proper relationship with God, we were made to enjoy him, serve him, interact with him, and love him forever. Among all of the other artistry created by the Lord, we are his masterpiece. He takes pleasure in our comfortable delight in him and that which he created for us to enjoy. Imagine that there was a mission statement hung on some heavenly wall, before God moved on the great nothing to divide it into light and dark, heaven and earth, land and water, sun and moon. The ultimate division was between multitudes of wild creatures and man, made in God’s own image. The mission statement might read: That all who are made in my image might live in joyous union with me and in appreciative harmony with everyone and everything else I have created for their benefit. Or perhaps a pre-automobile bumper sticker: Love me and enjoy my loving provision forever. We can wordsmith this idea of the mission of God, but the ultimate picture is not unlike what Lawrence Richards wrote about when he used hyphenation as a means to express what it’s all about: faith-as-life. Our very life is hidden, discovered, and experienced when we are in right relationship with the Creator God. Every other relationship with everything else in creation has the potential to be life-enhancing when our Creator God is honored as Lord of every aspect of our existence. But we could benefit from some contextualization. The overarching story of the Bible is that sin’s introduction to our existence in Genesis 3 tacks on an important addendum to the mission of God. We know longer naturally know this God who loves us and wants us to know him. Our individual and collective souls have been distorted by sin, inclining us to move away from our created purposes and to flail about in an illusory abyss of self-destruction. We are lost unless rescued by a loving God. We are hopelessly unable to comprehend the truth of our existence if the Lord does not save us from ceaselessly swapping ignorance with ourselves. Our role in the mission of God today—and since the fall—has been to make the one true God known among the nations and to bear witness that in him alone can we find the life for which we were created. Our ability to tell that story well is directly proportionate to our ability to live fully into that story of redemption, reconciliation, and life. Along the way, we endlessly fight off every new contender for the allegiance of our hearts, setting them apart to be wholly given to the one true God. Every time we win large or small battles with idolatrous temptations, we declare over and over again to our fellow flawed humans that false gods fail. And if—by God’s grace and mercy—our lives and words are synched by integrity, we may be honored to play a role as assets in the mission of God.
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Comments
God help us.
You're right, you have to start moving in that direction. It's so connected to working out our salvation. It is the cruciform life.
Peace
“Home is not always comfortable and community is not easy. In every community the healing of acceptance happens and deep betrayals take place. There is always someone in the community who betrays your trust or hands you over to something painful or unwanted…But it’s not just one person who does the betraying. In the eyes of others, I may be that person. Or you may be that person. It’s not that one person in the community is the problem: it’s more that different people are handing other people over to suffering all the time without even wanting to or knowing what they are doing. There is always someone who doesn’t satisfy my need or someone who irritates me. Community is not some sentimental ideal place or time where everybody lives together, loves each other, and always gets along. That’s never going to happen…Rather, in living together we come to realize that community doesn’t require or offer total emotional harmony. It offers us the context where we try to love one another and receive the love and care of others.”
I think our desire to sentimentalize the concept of community is one of the biggest obstacles to actually experiencing lasting community.
I'm part of a "Christian" community right now that is shaping me to be a better individual according to the "American Dream" and less of the cruciform life Sarah mentions above. So do I bail on this community or continue to participate and allow my convictions to be shaped by what I do not want to become? Which is ultimately a selfish, i.e., individualist question to ask in the first place. How do we as the church begin to move past these dilemmas we find within the current systems?
Community, for the most part is what Lewis called a 'second thing' or a thing that attends on something else. He said in the 4 Loves that friendship is something that happens when two people are on the way somewhere together. They are bound together by something common. Community is a formational imperative, but it is usually not achieved, or achieved poorly when it is sought directly. If you want Christian community, you must ask- what must I seek so that the byproduct will be community. Otherwise you get the cheeky kind of community once summarized in my time at Trinity by one wag who said community is, "...what single people do when they're on campus." I've experienced great Christian community in my day, and it was always when I was seeking something else- usually the Kingdom, in some specific way.