“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves… Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it…He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” pgs 26-27
Reading this immediately moves my thoughts toward all of the programs that we put together to promote Christian community among ourselves. I spent my college career as a chaplain who sought cultivating community among those for whom I was responsible. I am a believer in the importance of living in community with each other. As Christians, we are not meant to live in isolation from one another so we must be intentional about doing this whole community thing.
That stated, as I am reading this book and observing community around me, I am realizing that true community cannot be made with a cookie cutter. When I first became a chaplain, I had all of these grand ideas about how I was going to cultivate community among the girls on my floor. I prayed about it for months before I even moved into the dorms with the other girls. I had a vision of what it should be and anything less than that would be failure. I envisioned all of the girls on my floor hanging out in each others’ rooms praying, reading our Bibles, and worshiping God together. We certainly had moments, but this was not the constant scene that I initially felt it should have been.
Throughout my first year as a chaplain, I can recognize precise moments when God very graciously sent me into disillusionment with my idea of what it meant to be in community. I learned that often enough, community simply meant being present and simply living life with those around me. I found that the sweetest times that we shared together in prayer, in reading our Bibles, in worshiping God, were not during a scheduled time. They did not usually happen during my weekly “devotional” that I conducted. These moments occurred in the regular ebb and flow of life lived together. In celebration. In sorrow. In boredom. In business. In motion. In stillness. In supplication. In gratitude. In doubt. In wonder.
Christian community is not about creating the perfected program. It not about being organized into particular groups that meet at regular times. It is not even about always praying, reading, and worshiping together.
“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” pg 30
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