THE SIXTH TRANSFORMATION
COMMUNITY BUILDING
"They
devoted themselves to the apostle's instruction and the communal life, to the
breaking of bread and the prayers...those who believed shared all things in
common...they went to the temple area together every day, while in their homes
they broke bread. With exultant
and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning
the approval of all the people.
Day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being
saved".
Acts
2:42-47
This verse
follows closely after the description of Pentecost. It is clear that the author of Luke/Acts intended to connect
the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost with the idea of the
"commissioning" of the church.
At Pentecost, the mantle of Jesus' earthly ministry of proclaiming the
Reign of God is passed on to the church.
The question that must have faced them was, "how do we best
structure the community to carry out this mission?"
A close reading
of the verse cited above from the Acts of the Apostles reveals that from its
very origins, the Christian community had two primary foci.
"They
went to the temple area together every day".
They continued to observe the Jewish rites that were connected with the
temple worship. To reinforce this
idea is the fact that Paul's pattern was to establish new churches around the
local synagogue. This structure
and form would closely parallel our present parish or congregational structure.
"While
in their homes they broke bread". At the same
time that the community gathered for temple worship, smaller groupings of
Christians would gather in individual homes to observe Jesus' command to
remembrance in the breaking of bread.
As the Christian
community galvanized and drew farther from its Jewish heritage, becoming a
distinct religious tradition in its own rite, the temple and synagogue
observances became less and less a part of the community's normal pattern. Eventually the "Oikos Ecclesiolae"
- the Small House Church
- became the normal form and structure of the Christian community. This remained the norm until the middle
of the fourth century.
When the Emperor
Constantine issued the "Edict of Milan" in 312 C.E. Christianity
became an official religion of the Roman Empire. The community moved out of isolation and into the mainstream
of society. The Roman basilica
replaced the house as the gathering place for the community, and the parish
supplanted the house church as the normal structure for the church. From that time until the present, the
parish church has remained the sole experience of church for almost all
Christians.
How effective is
the parish in meeting the demands of Jesus' mission in contemporary society?
An assessment
was offered by Bishop Albert Ottenweller in an address to the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops:
"I
believe that the traditional parish structure is too institutional, too
authoritarian, too impersonal. I
believe strongly that people today are hungry. They are hungry for friendship, hungry for celebration,
hungry for God. People today are
searching. They are searching for
a group with whom they can live together in faith, searching for something that
calls them to worship, searching for ways they can enter more deeply into
themselves. And people today are
filled with longing. They are
longing for a place they can call home, longing for people who are truly their
brothers and sisters in Christ, longing for a spiritual family in which they
can risk being themselves and where they will be willing to give their lives
for one another."[i]
Arthur
Baranowski, pastor of a parish in Southgate, Michigan observes, "(A)
continuing trend is toward large parishes where staff people specialize in
education, worship or outreach - and this specialization can easily become
compartmentalization. As a result,
parishes can have many activities without having a specific, clear-cut and
workable plan for brining people together to reinforce each other
as...Christians struggling to live a gospel life-style".[ii]
In light of this
trend toward "bigness" and specialization, Baranowski goes on to ask,
"...does a (person) feel loved and cared for simply by belonging to the
church?" His answer is
obviously not because, "...our parishes don't bring people together in a
way that they can easily care about each other".[iii]
Even the Vatican
believes that there needs to be, "a rethinking...of the traditional parish
community system; a search for community patterns which will be more fraternal,
more adapted to people's life situation; more basic ecclesial
communities; caring communities of lively faith, love
(warmth, acceptance, understanding, reconciliation, fellowship), and hope;
celebrating communities; praying communities; missionary communities: outgoing and witnessing..."[iv]
From all
quarters the church is being challenged to find what we need and what we don't
need in order to adapt our structures to the realities of life in contemporary
society and the challenge to live in the light of the Gospel.
"...we
don't need a better program; we need a better church. We need a church that is itself a more obvious experience of
sharing faith and caring for each other.
How can we get this "better church"? By restructuring...into smaller churches, into small basic
faith communities. Not prayer groups, not scripture study groups, not another program of any kind - but
permanent...small faith communities".[v]
All over the
world people are responding to this challenge by forming small groups within
which to live their faith.
Started in
Central and South America, this movement toward small communities has spread
throughout the world, adapting itself to the particular needs of the culture in
which it finds itself. Today in
Brazil alone there are over 80,000 such communities. In the United States, this movement has gathered increasing
momentum in the past twenty years.[vi]
Called variously, Small Christian Communities (SCC), Intentional
Christian Communities, or Small Church, these intimate gatherings represent a
return to the roots of the Christian community in the house church. "Once again...the church is being
reborn as small, grassroots communities.
Their rise is not only a dynamic response to impersonal times, but also
a way of enacting the vision of Vatican Council II...The Council...presented
the church as a people, a communion, a discipleship of equals who celebrate
life and live the gospel together.
This is cause for celebration, but also for decision. Those who do not find a way of
sustaining their faith in the days ahead will be overwhelmed by secularism,
materialism and individualism...Therefore we must conquer fear and hesitation
and break out of stiffening habits learned over a lifetime."[vii]
While the
experience of the early Christian community is not normative in all respects
for contemporary experience, it does provide a broad dynamic within two
distinct kinds of structures, each of which can fulfill its own role in
attaining to the four traditional characteristics of the Christian community:
o Koinonia
A
gathering of people in a partnership of faith in Jesus Christ who share care
and
concern for one another.
o Diakonia
The
call to the service of others which results from discipleship in Christ. We
are
called to serve wherever there is a need for service.
o Kerygma
The
name for the Great Story whose proclamation gathers the community together
and provides the paradigm for the life of the disciple.
o Leitourgia
The
community's public acts of worship
The house church
is a community in
which the members make an intentional covenant with one another. In the strictest sense these communities can be called Intentional
Covenant Communities
because they are:
o Intentional
They
are purposeful, created with intent.
Many
people are members of churches or religious traditions because they
were
born into it. They have never
examined their affiliation or made a conscious choice about it. The Society's communities are
intentionally created and membership is deliberately chosen.
o Covenant
The
idea of covenant has several aspects to it. The members are bonded and committed to one another, to the
Society, and to the Universal Church.
They share a relationship with one another. "A commitment to intentional community is an
acknowledgment of the fact that being-related is central to human
existence".[viii]
Covenant
also conveys the concept of "voluntary". In reality the church is a voluntary society, membership
cannot be compelled. In the same
way, membership in the Society is voluntary and freely chosen. "At one level, a commitment to intentional Christian
community is a promise to stay engaged over time with a particular group of
persons...commitment makes ourselves available to specific others in a privileged way".[ix]
o Fellowship
It
is fellowship because it is "a relatively small group of persons (ideally
eight to 12) committed to ongoing conversation and shared action along four
distinguishable but interrelated dimensions:
-
They are consistently committed to a high degree of mutuality in the relationships
among them. (Koinonia)..
-
They pursue an informed critical awareness of and active engagement within the
cultural, political and economic megasystems of their society. (Diakonia).
-
They cultivate and sustain a network of lively connections with other persons,
communities and movements of similar purpose. (Diakonia).
- They attend faithfully to the Christian
character of their community's life.[x]
(Kerygma and
Leitourgia).
These aspects
correspond to the traditional characteristics of Christian community of koinonia,
diakonia, kerygma and leitourgia.
"Therefore,
to say that intentional Christian communities are characterized by mutuality,
social engagement, networking and Christian remembrance is to say that these
small groups are concretely involved together in the genuine praxis of koinonia,
diakonia, kerygma and leitourgia".[xi]
The communities
have a set of aspects - relational, spiritual, and social which make up a
"community dynamic" suspended on the poles of intentionality and
covenant.
RELATIONAL
ASPECTS
1. Trust
An
atmosphere must be created and maintained in which people can feel safe in
being both vulnerable with and challenging to one another.
2. Caring
The
operative characteristic in the caring aspect is compassion.
-
Compassion is "to have passion with".
o Empathy
o Concern
for
o Love
3. Forgiveness
o The
ability to ask for and offer forgiveness.
o A
willingness to reconcile differences.
o Requires
a true sense of equality among members.
- If I am "better" than you I do not need your forgiveness,
although I may
"grant"you mine.
-
If I am "less" than you, I have no right to ask your forgiveness.
- If we can forgive one another, we can then become reconciling forces
in
the world, Beacons of Reconciliation.
4. Self-Esteem
Perhaps
the most important, it allows for the other three to exist.
o Each
of us must hold the other in high regard as a child of God.
"Look at the love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be
called
children of God! Yet, that is what we are". I John 3:1a.
o It
is the responsibility of each of us to:
a. Love
ourselves and hold ourselves in high regard.
- "For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
whoever believes in him will
never die". John 3:16.
- If
God loves me that much, what right do I
have not to love
myself?
b. Love
one another, hold one another in high regard, and support and encourage
the self-esteem of one another.
"Let
us love in deed and in truth, and not merely talk about it. This is our way of knowing we are
committed to the truth". I
John 3:18-19.
PRAYER - A
BRIDGE CHARACTERISTIC
None of the
relational aspects can be achieved outside of an atmosphere of prayer.
Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.
The
relationships which we seek to establish with one another are:
Impossible
without true prayer, and
Inescapable
with true prayer.
A life centered
in prayer will transform all of our relationships. Prayer is not so important because of what it causes God to do, but because of what it causes us to do!
PRAYER IS THE
BRIDGE BETWEEN THE RELATIONAL AND THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF THE COMMUNITY DYNAMIC.
CELEBRATION -
A BRIDGE CHARACTERISTIC
If prayer is a
way of life, CELEBRATION is an attitude toward life.
"All this I
tell you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete" John 15:11.
"The fruit
of the Spirit is joy"
Galatians 5:22.
Joy and celebration is what keeps life from becoming dull and uninspiring. It is not accidental that wine is part of our important celebrations.