The High Cost of Authentic Community

“The High Cost of Authentic Community”
Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, Oct 4, 2015
Text: Romans 15:1-13 // Series: 4 Significant Stones

Every generation, every decade, every industry, has its own buzz words…. Phrases or soundbites that everyone uses but no one seems to know quite what they mean. You’ll find them on resumes and linked in profiles – “I’m a proactive team player who works at adding value to disruptive innovations as I push the envelope to optimize holistic and synergistic thinking across platforms while advancing a gluten-free, all-natural non-GMO snack room environment!” What does that person even do with their time?  

I would suggest that one the current buzz words in our world is “authenticity”. How would you define it? [no wrong answers, just shout it out].

In evangelical circles, another buzz word is community. What do we mean when we use the word community? This morning we’re going to looking into God’s Word and explore the 4^th and final rock in our teaching series 4 significant stones. Each stone has represented something of the building blocks necessary for a faith community. Today, we’ll explore further what the Bible says about what it means to live together in community or family called the church in a way that is authentic. But also in a way that is defined and shaped not by our culture but by the design and invitation of the Holy Spirit.    

The question is: “How do you define community” It’s a bit of a buzz word in that it can mean something different to each person or in different situation. Let me show you what I mean by looking at a few ways Jericho uses the word.

Community is in our name: Jericho Ridge Community Church – which in that content means we are not only formed into a community, but we are here for our community – we are not sectarian, so you can only come if you are already “Mennonite Brethren” or already a Christian. So in that one use, community is used at least three ways to say something about our Composition, our Geography and Posture. We are a community. In a community. We are about building community.

And then in our core values, we also use the term Community…

“God exists in community and models for us what it means to be both vitally connected with Him and interdependent with one another. We desire relationships with one another that are transparent, supportive, encouraging and rooted in a desire to love as we have been loved by God.

Challenge is that’s really long & lofty. One of the things we are working on is to put that into short, memorable phrase and then begin to ask “how would we know if we were accomplishing that?” We preface it with the word authentic. So here, community says something about the relational tone within the church. So this one word “community” is already being used to communicate at least different but related ideas. Now, I’m not suggesting we do away with the word or revise our name or the language we use. I am suggesting, however, that I think we can do a better job of defining what we mean when we use the word community. So this morning, we are going to look to the New Testament book of Romans to help us answer the question “what type of community do we want to build and become at Jericho?” What are the characteristics of a community called the church?

In his excellent book The Safest Place on Earth Christian psychologist and author Dr. “Larry Crabb suggests that we put the term “spiritual” in front of the word “community” to be the primary modifier. He says

“The church is a community of people on a journey to God… a spiritual community, full of broken people who turn their chairs toward each other because they know they can not make it alone. These broken people journey together with their wounds and worries and washouts visible, but are able to see beyond the brokenness to something alive and good, something whole.”

I love how Larry Crabb wrestles with the nature of community in a church – he’s written four books on that topic now and I have been challenged by each one of them. He pushes us to define community not based on the level of our experiences but the biblical descriptions of spiritual community.

So this morning, we are going to look at Romans 15 where we see laid out for us five characteristics of spiritual community. Five descriptive phrases that anchor for us who we are to be and what we are to become as we life together in God’s family, the church. I’ll be reading 15:1-13 from the New Living Translation – verses 1-7 will come up on the screens so grab your phones or Bibles.

Scripture – 4 slides [Media note: there is a gap from 15:8-12… leave up vs 7]

I’m not sure what the topic heading is at the beginning of Chapter 15 in your Bible. Mine says “living to please others”. Paul in this section of the book of Romans is talking about the high-challenge complexity of building and being a faith community in our world. And the very first thing he says is almost offensive to our modern sensibilities. He says that the first characteristic of spiritual community is that

1. It’s not designed to be convenient (15:1)

Spiritual community is not designed with your convenience in mind. Here’s why.

The challenge with spiritual community is that it’s comprised of people who are not all like you. Not like me. Church would be so much easier if everyone was the same, wouldn’t it? But we aren’t. Each of us is at different places on our spiritual journeys. You have unique personal and cultural and family histories. You have different denominational backgrounds, different generational perspectives, different musical tastes and diverse learning styles and family compositions. We have different children’s nap times, different temperaments and different ways of praying and different preferences in singing…. The list goes on and on. And all of these of these differences mean one thing for a spiritual community like Jericho: they are deeply inconvenient. If they were all eliminated, church would be easy. But part of the reason it isn’t easy we are called to be considerate of those around us. Look what Paul says in 15:1  

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• Spiritual community comes with an obligation to bear with the failings and faults of others

“We must not just live to please ourselves”, Paul says in verse 1. We need to be sensitive to the feelings and needs and unique distinctive of those around us. The challenge for me is that I want to people around me to bear with my faults but I am sometimes not willing to bear with theirs. I want them to think the best of my intentions but I am not willing to give them the same benefit of the doubt.

It’s like how I thought about grocery shopping before I had kids vs. after. Before I had kids, if I saw a kid throwing a tantrum in the middle of Superstore I thought to myself “they must be bad parents!” After I had kids? I thought to myself “that must be a bad kid!” (Not your kids, of course!). But here’s my point: we want others to give us grace, to understand our weaknesses and failings. We want others sensitive and considerate of our uniqueness’s but sometimes we are not as gracious in showing that to people around us. Paul says this particularly about people who have been around Christian community for a longer time. I love the way that the Message translation puts this verse:     

• “Strength is for service; not for status” (The MSG)

Maturity comes with responsibility. Spiritual maturity also comes with responsibility – that is that we are not part of community because of what it does for us. We are part of the community because of what we can contribute for others. And that often comes at the cost of personal convenience. The first question to reflect on this morning is  

• What am I willing to give up for those around me?

Authentic community is never easy. It comes with a high cost. The cost is that we all will let each other down. Some of you have felt let down by other here at Jericho or by me. None of us is perfect. We are all working through our own stuff… but authentic spiritual community is better than the alternative (plastic community). What price are you willing to pay, because community…

Picture: It is Not Easy But it is worth it… now repeat everyday

First characteristic of spiritual community we see in Romans 15 is that by its very Divine design, it is not convenient. The second characteristic is related. That

It’s goal is edification not comfort (15:2)

Edification is a Bible-buzzword for my growth and development as a disciple, a follower of Jesus who wants to pattern my life after his life and teachings. Here in Romans 15, Paul says that part of our work in community is to help others do what is right and to build them up in the Lord. (in their faith).   

• Helping people do what is right is hard work!

Partly because it means pointing out what in their life needs improvement or is just plain wrong. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not always warm to that kind of input or feedback. We all love it when our spouse or our boss or parent tells us how great we are or lists all of the helpful and wonderful things we do but sometimes when they say “you need to improve in this area or that area, we are not so keen to receive that feedback. It’s human nature to tell others to do what is right, but we are not always so excited hear where we are in the wrong.

Part of the deep challenge here is that the goal of our words in a spiritual community is to build each other up in ways that are appropriate. One of the great sorrows for me in this season of my life is that I have not always modeled this well. I don’t always receive criticism well… Some people have desired to build me up I have received it as personal attack. Some have desired to speak edification into the life of Jericho, and people around them have become defensive or even aggressive in a desire to protect. This is where the modifier spiritual community I think is superior to the phrase authentic community. Because in an authentic community, I get to say whatever I want and I’m just being me. But in a spiritual community, I must ask myself “will this edify my brother or my sister? Not just in what I say but the way I say it, where and how I say it?” This is why helping others do what is right building them up in the Lord is stupidly hard work - because it will bring about conflict. It requires a culture that has two components to it: A culture of transparency and a culture of grit. Transparency, which means we are open and honest with each other about our strengths as well as our weak areas. And we don’t use what we know about a persons’ weak area to wound them. But also a culture of “grit” – this is like sandpaper… sandpaper with no grit on it really can’t take off any rough edges. A culture that has grit calls us to speak the truth in love for a person’s growth.  

Part of the hard work of the church is that it calls us to places and actions and beliefs that are not comfortable. The call of discipleship is a call to self-denial. A call to give away our possessions resources to people who are poor. To use our time to serve others. This is why churches can never be designed by focus group. I love the way life-long pastor and author Eugene Peterson puts this is his memoir, a book called “The Pastor”. He says

“The minute churches and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We’re called to have people follow Jesus. We’re called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies” – Eugene Peterson.

This is hard work! But the long term payoff of living in community and sticking with it is that you see real and meaningful change in your life. I asked my accountability partner on Friday over breakfast “have I changed at all over the past year?” I held my breath for a minute while he thought about the answer. When you commit yourself to community, you are going to get some of the rough edges knocked off of you. And this will hurt and it will take time. So if you are part of a spiritual community, you want to ask yourself “How am I helping build people up around me?” That is not just a question of what actions are you taking, but also the tone or spirit in which you speak or undertake them. But as we build each other up in the Lord, something beautiful happens… Community begins to develop. A community that is not only inconvenient & growth-oriented but one that is Characteristic #3…

3. It’s imperfect & woefully messy (15:3-4)

You might say “Brad, this verse says that we are supposed to have hope and encouragement.” So far you’ve basically said that the church will be inconvenient, it will be personally challenging and now you’re saying it will be messy?!” And I’m supposed to want to be part of this community?!”    

Here’s the tension we live with or more appropriately that we live in. It can be very easy for us to look at the early church in the pages of Scripture and idealize it. To think things like “look at how incredible the depth of community was in the early church! I mean, they had it going on! Surely if we could return to that first Century kind of ideals for the church, we could solve all the challenges and woes of the modern church!” Friends, this is woefully naive kind of thinking. The church has always been and always will be messy and imperfect because though it is a divinely designed and beautifully orchestrated institution, as soon as we got involved in community, we bring our imperfections and flaws to the table and we mess things up.

See we are living in a time between times. Between the time when the church was inaugurated by the work and person of Jesus who said “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!” and the time when the church will be presented to Christ as a pure ad spotless bride as to her bridegroom. We live in the time between times when    

• God’s promises & purposes are not yet fulfilled

And that’s messy. That’s why we are to wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled! But as we do so, there’s a big danger we can fall into. Scot McKnight in his book Kingdom Conspiracy, Returning to the radical mission of the local church says that we get into trouble when we compare and contrast the

• Comparing “Not-yet-Kingdom” & “Church now”

The challenge is that in God’s Kingdom that will be fully realized at the return of Christ Jesus, we will have perfect community. We will have perfect harmony with each other. We will have perfect and restored relationship with God and with creation. But until that day, we live in a fallen world. And so when we compare the future ideal painted for us in pages of the New Testament and we see the present realty of our church, we can become very discouraged. But that is why Paul says look to the scriptures for Hope and encouragement… The early church didn’t have it all together either, much as we can idealize them. Look at the list of problems they had in 1 century church in Corinth! Go back and listen to our Messy Church series earlier this year. These groups of people were messed up! They fought and bickered over all kinds of stuff. Jews couldn’t get along with Gentiles because of cultural and religious differences, even though Paul spends a huge chunk of real estate in Romans 15 saying why Gentiles should be invited to the table.  

Our problem, my problem, is that I want the ideal. And therefore I lose patience with the real. I want the prefect church, so I don’t have patience with the present church. Paul says “wait patiently… the promises of God to His people will one day be fulfilled. But today is not that day. Today is the day to acknowledge like that bumper sticker I used to see around “please be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet”. The question for you and I is How patient am I (with myself? Others? God?)

You are being patient because there are two more characteristics to go in our passage this morning. Paul says not only should we expect spiritual community to be inconvenient, to cost us something as we grow, not only is it imperfect and woefully messy. But surprisingly, in the midst of this, it is to be characterized by

4. It’s ethos is harmony and unity (15:5-7)

Paul says in 14:19, let’s aim for harmony and unity in the church and try to build each other up. Then here again in 15:5 “may God, who gives you this patient endurance help you live in complete harmony with each other as it fitting for followers of Christ Jesus”. What does Paul mean by complete harmony? Well if it’s messy and inconvenient and we are going to build each other up, he can’t mean uniformity or that we are all the same. Here’s where the church is so radically different from a country club in the community that is shared. A country club has harmony and unity built on sameness. We all like yachting or golfing or sailing. We share socioeconomic similarities and thus we have “unity”.

But the church is to bear witness to the world in a different way. We are told in our culture that if you don’t agree with someone, you should go find those who you do agree with. But that takes no work whatsoever, does it? If I only hang out with those who look like me, pray like me, think like me, give like me, that’s uniformity, NOT true unity.      

• Uniformity brings God no glory!

Because the world isn’t stupid.. They can look in and say “you don’t need supernatural resources to get along if you are all alike anyways. That’s not hard at all!” Paul says when a diversity of individuals gets together and can lift up the name of Jesus in one voice, with one mind and one heart, THAT is not natural, that is super-natural because there is no way that much human diversity should experience harmony and unity!  

Seth Godin, researched and author suggests that we live in a tribal culture, in the sense we are very quick to find our tribe, the people with who we already agree or have something in common. It’s often what draws us to a church. Oh there’s people here who are “like me”. But the church isn’t supposed to be a tribal culture, we are a table culture.  

• Tribal Culture versus Table Culture

We invite people into community with us who are different than us. Who believe different things. Who dress differerntly. We are a table culture, not a tribal culture. And friends, when I look at people in this church I see this. Some of you view finance differently. Different opinions on the role of women and men… yet I have seen you come together. You do Life groups together. You bring meals to people who have vastly different opinions than you. You are doing the hard work to make room at your table. This is happening… When we do it in small ways, it begins to take root. What are the everyday choices you make that will express this?

• How am I demonstrating radical acceptance?

This is why one of the 97 metaphors for the church in the New Testament is the notion of a family. In a family, you may disagree, you may fight, you may have vastly different opinions but you still come to the table for Thanksgiving. You don’t homogeneous or minimize your differences, but you are willing to stay in relationship and work to understand and to be understood. And friends, this brings God much glory. Because as people who practice radical acceptance of those who do not love us, we model what God did for us in Christ Jesus. 15:7”accept each other as Christ has accepted you SO THAT God will be given glory!” This is the most exciting and radical news of all – that Christ loved and accepted us not because we had it all together, but because we were sinners without God and without hope. Friend that might be you here today. You may have never said yes to Jesus. Thinking “I have to be perfect in order for God to love me” The good news that you’ll never be perfect. But Jesus lived the perfect life, took all of your sin, shame imperfections and guilt onto Himself on the cross 2,000 years ago. God raised Him from the dead and you can put your full hope and confidence in Him and in His goodness and perfection and NOT in your own goodness or efforts. If that’s you today – come pray with our team before you leave. God wants to give you a fresh start, new life today in Him.

Friends the way in is the way on. The way we enter the community of faith but trust and confidence in Jesus, is the way that we are to live that out day by day. Romans 15:13 says that the power of the Holy Spirit at work in and through you and I is what draws us together in unity and community. The community of faith is a Spirit-built enterprise, not a human institution or organization.

5. Spirit builds it; we choose to enter it

The strength to live together in spiritual community is the Spirit. I don’t have the resources on my own to love you guys sufficiently. I need to the God of hope to fill me with joy and peace. I can’t manufacture those on my own. The church’s role isn’t to manufacture those in your life in 90 minutes on a Sunday morning.

• Foundation isn’t striving, it’s receiving

Our call is to be daily filled with the Spirit. To maintain a posture of humility and openness and saying “Jesus, I want to depend deeply on you”. Depending deeply on God to create this kind of community takes us outside of our personal comfort zones. Takes us beyond the realm of having everything mapped  

• There’s mystery to depending deeply on Jesus

This gives me profound hope. The goal is not to make things in the church un-messy (not to tidy things up so we all agree on everything)… It will ALWAYS be messy. The call is to depend deeply follow faithfully.

• Do I trust God that He is building His Church?

This is why I am a pastor… That’s why I believe in this imperfect, messy, hard-work thing called the church. I get so excited to see people walking towards transformed Kingdom living. When I think of the part that each of us get to play, inviting God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done not only here in this community, but in places like Guatemala or at House of Hope or in your neighbourhood or workplaces… That’s what fires me up. It’s not about our programs, thinking creatively. It’s about living together in a spiritual community that sees lives changed – beginning with our own and overflowing with confident hope out into the world. I think we so easily lose sight of what God’s heart is for His church… Frankly, when God looks at you, he is proud NOT because you are perfect, but because you are working at it. You are open to messiness; you are walking it out in HOPE… He is proud of His church. He is building His church for His glory and His name. It will always be inconvenient, challenging, messy but it will also be the place where you and I have the chance, if we so choose, to experience the life and joy and power of the Spirit. Let’s Pray!

[Prayer team – Curtis, Ann-Marie, myself]