Perhaps one of the most used and least defined words that occur today is, ‘community’. The contemporary quest of building, nurturing and rescuing the practice of community in 1st world societies does suggest that not all is well with it. Community, across our wider society, is recognisably under threat. Cultures of individualism and consumerism, together with patterns of social and economic migration and marginalisation, seem allied to the breakdown of the extended family and local interdependence to conspire against community.
This, inevitably, translates into Christian culture. The development of vocabulary used to describe church as community, in itself, tells its own tale in plotting a course: Believers’, Sacramental, Missional, Seeker Sensitive, Without walls, Fresh Expressions, Inclusive.
In the early years of church, in the Apostolic era, the church was a self-identifying community of Christian disciples. Their together life was catalysed by their shared allegiance to the resurrected Christ as their Lord: they were a community of disciples, of believers and followers of Jesus Christ and His teachings. Church as Believers’ church is an emphasis owned among both anabaptists and baptistic Christians today.
As church became socially acceptable, following the conversion of the Roman emperor, it became functional for wider society: a sacramental presence. An understanding of church as sacramental, mediating grace into the wider world, through the recognised sacraments (and an unofficial one: preaching). This understanding is still central to Christendom model churches, such as Orthodox, Episcopal, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian.
In the 2nd half of the 20th century, where church attendance in the UK has plummeted, we have seen a new vocabulary emerge: Missional, Seeker Sensitive, Without walls, Fresh Expressions, Inclusive. These adjectives, in themselves, show a progression in what has been
a creative and sometimes desperate attempt to engage and attract people into Christian faith. However, all this leaves us with a fundamental question: ‘what do we mean, when we speak of community’?
Let me suggest a working hypothesis: that Christian community is characterised as a group of people, holding together convictions and practices that demonstrate allegiance to Jesus as Lord, owning an understanding of costly grace and committed to cruciform discipleship. This is the measure of our distinctiveness, of what we have to offer to the world. It particularises all that we mean when we seek to articulate good news of love, righteousness and justice brought to mankind from God, in and through Jesus Christ.
Our affirmation, in the title of this article, goes further. Church needs to be a real community. What do we mean by that? Simply this: developing people of convictions and practices requires more than an occasional meeting once a week, where attendance is predominantly passive and non-participative. Before we begin to reach out to people, we have to look at the quality of what we are reaching out from. Do we intentionally strategise how we might practice what is preached? Do we pursue practices that show the character of God, revealed in Scripture and met with in Jesus Christ? Are these what we are know for? If, we are not part of a real, Christian community, our attempts at witness are problematic, for the proof of the pudding can only be in the eating. It was, after all, Jesus who said, ‘by their fruit you shall know them’.
This is the fourth of six, introductory essays designed for social media. The fifth will follow.
