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May 02, 2009
Interim Rector's Reflections - May
I was recently asked what I thought helped build community. Although I have an intuitive grasp of the answer, I had never put it into words, so I hope you will find it helpful if I repeat some of what I found myself saying.
I believe there are at least three things which build community, or as Paul said, which ‘…build up the body of Christ.’
1. A spiritual center
2. A certain knowledge base
3. Commitment
A spiritual center means for me, minimally, a set of shared, lived values. In the church it connotes both the spiritual center created by our common worship in all its forms, and the spiritual center within each member of the community created by a personal discipline of regular prayer.
A certain knowledge base means knowing enough about the history, traditions and shared values of the community to be able to articulate what they are, and know how to apply them to situations as they arise. It is not adequate for a single leader, or even a handful of people to be able to do this. As Trinity discovered when Mike got sick, there are inevitable times when such people are not available. In such times, avoiding chaos and strengthening community depend on the ability of everyone to recognize, articulate and act on the basic principles of a church or other community.
Commitment means being willing to work through, communicate in, and if necessary fight out differences with the people who are members of our community, without letting go of the relationships at the heart of that community. This attitude asks, ‘What do we need to do together to sort this out?’ It is in contrast to constantly asking, ‘Is it time for me to leave?’ (The obvious exception, of course, is in cases of abuse, where leaving is often appropriate, moral and necessary.) In one of his songs, Mark Knopfler says ‘You can’t go playing poker with a pistol in your sleeve. You can’t make somebody love you by threatening to leave.’ Anytime we constantly consider leaving, we have essentially decided that we cannot trust the members of the community, and that they cannot trust us. The good news is that we do not trust the Body of Christ just because we happen to like and trust individual members of it, but because we know Christ himself to be trustworthy.
I am heartened by how many people at Trinity practice these three elements of community, and how much evidence I see of growth in all three areas.
Blessings, Corrie+
