Exploring Community

Community is almost something of a lost concept these days. It is a lot fellowship that the world has unfortunately polluted with its own set of ideals, standards, and prerequisites to involvement within it. Community has become a giant country club where even Christians pay dues to remain a part of it. That is not a community. That is a clique. It is unfortunate that this is the idea that most people think of when they think of community, even Christian community. So what exactly is Christian community? What does it look like? Where is it found? Where does it begin? True Christian community, whether looked at biblically, theologically, or practically, should always find its foundation rooted in Christ Jesus. This is the point where community should bloom.
It is important to look at the idea of community from a biblical perspective. When one does, he better understands what the concept of community means both theologically and practically. If one does not examine community biblically, one runs the risk of mistaking community for personal ideals instead of structure and theology rooted in the word of God and Christ Jesus. So what does community look like biblically? In order to wrap one’s mind around such a thing, community needs to be explored in the Old and New Testaments as well as its interpretation, or lack thereof, in today’s world.
It is easy to jump straight into the book of Acts, seeing as that is where most people look to try to understand true Christian community. However, it is really important to start ones search in the Old Testament and the idea of it through the eyes of a Jew. The foundations of New Testament community gather some of their strength from their predecessor. So what does Old Testament Jewish community look like?
Community was initially formed to center around the worship of God. Israel, the covenant people, was this community. Robert Wall says of this community that “the worshipping community was also a witnessing community, called forth to reflect in its common life the very character of its transcendent God.”[1] In other words, the purpose of the original Jewish community was not just to worship God, but the fruit of their worship was their witness; their worship of God produced a gospel to be lived out in the everyday life of their community. However, it was not through the revelation of the Spirit that this community chose to base their witness and worship on, but the Torah. The word of God at that time was the Jewish community’s source of divine revelation, the source that they based their witness and worship.[2]
When Jesus came around he did not necessarily shatter this image or ideal of community, but he added to it and breathed new life into it. The New Testament community accepted the role of a worshipful witnessing community, however, this aspect was “decisively influenced by their conviction that Jesus was God’s Messiah, and that through him God had begun a new Exodus for the restored, eschatological Israel.”[3] The community was no longer something that centered on the Torah, but an element of Christian living that focused on Jesus and the hopeful future of the community that Jesus brought and drove them towards.
Wall argues that this pull, which fueled the Messianic movement, that is keeping God at the center, is what was at the core of Jesus’ idea of community.[4] Therefore, the New Testament community began to base their ideas and actions on this notion of keeping God at the center, which in effect, meant keeping Jesus and his message at the center of their community.
The early church community that is found in the book of Acts is a fine example of this type of community, one that keeps Jesus and his message and mission at the center.

"And they continued steadfastly in the apostle’s doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking of bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved."[5]

This is a long passage of scripture, but it is necessary in order to understand not only Christian community in the first century, but in the 21st century, emergent church as well. One might notice that the early church community continued worship in the temple, much like those of the Old Testament community of covenant Israel. The early church community also cared deeply for one another. When the scripture says that “they had all things in common,” it means that they all had friendship with one another[6]. As a result, they cared passionately for one another and held a high concern for each other’s health emotionally, physically, and even spiritually[7].
This community also sold its property and redistributed the proceeds to those in need. By doing so, it demonstrated “the social character of God’s kingdom, where all share equally in the good gifts of God.”[8] The early church was not a communist community by any means; rather, they were a body who cared for each other, a community that strived to share in sufferings, joys and ownership.
There is another large difference between the Old Testament’s idea of community and the New Testament’s early church. That difference is the Spirit. “God’s gift of the Spirit to the community suggests a transforming presence that unites the believers in a common koinonia.”[9] The Old Testament community more or less lacked the gift of God’s Spirit. The New Testament community, however, had that gift. It rooted its community not only on worship, the word of God, and Jesus’ message, but also on the ever moving and untamed Spirit of its living God.
The emerging church, which is becoming more popular as time moves on, finds its influence in the structure of the early Christian church, especially the one in Antioch. That is where the heart of the emerging church movement lays. The church in Jerusalem more or less continued what the Old Testament Jewish community practiced. It focused more on tradition and less on the life-giving Spirit and revelation of Jesus Christ, which is what the church in Antioch structured itself upon. Ray Anderson says it best when he says, “they were not so much interested in kingdom building as they were in living on the growing edge of the kingdom of God, where the dynamic presence and power of the Holy Spirit was found in a community of the Spirit rather than in a sanctuary of stone and glass.”[10]
It is not that the church in Jerusalem was all that bad because it was not, really. It just left out a lot of important aspects of developing community. Mainly Jesus as the Messiah and the Spirit of God as the untamed force leading the community into new and better places. The emerging church is about the contemporary presence of the historical Christ.[11]
This is just one aspect of community. This is only community glanced at from a biblical perspective. Fortunately, it is something much more that just this. What, however, might community look like from a more theological perspective? Where is the transfer of thought? How does one even begin to think about applying some of these concepts from the Bible to everyday practice? There is a lot of confusion about what community might look like outside of the scriptures, so it is important to think about not only what that confusion is, but about what ideas of community one should apply toward everyday living. In other words, a look at the thought of community should be taken.
In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer examines the role of faith inside of community. He says a lot of good things, which can be applied to practical aspects of the community life. Bonhoeffer starts by exploring what community means for the individual. In simple terms, it means fellowship. There is a lot within fellowship for the personal believer. It is a physical presence, which brings joy and strength.[12] He goes on to mention how this fellowship is merely a gift of grace given to humanity, perhaps a glimpse into the kingdom itself.[13] So for the believer in fellowship, that is in community, it is a grace that allows one to experience just a piece of the oneness he might find in heaven.
Every community has a common ground. In fact, most friendships are built on things that two share in common. So goes the church community (just look at the early church for example). Bonhoeffer says, “Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ… we belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”[14] In other words, ultimately, community does not begin in that all involved in it are hopeless sinners. Community begins and is grounded in the fact that everyone involved is one who belongs in Christ Jesus. This is similar to the early church community in that it found at the heart of its ministry the life, message, and mission of Jesus.
It is easy, especially for Christians in today’s society, to want to identify themselves with their commonness in sin. Bonhoeffer suggests that they do not do that. If that is the case, it becomes a hopeless band of individuals. However, a community with its foundations rooted in Christ is a community with a drive, with a hope, with a force greater that its own. It is a community that embraces the continuity of Christ and his impact on it, and allows that collision to carry it into the future.
Bonhoeffer next suggests that community is not a human ideal, in other words, its not something that man creates and invites others to become a part of, “it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”[15] How does one get to participate in this community? Through the Spirit of God, that draws people into fellowship with one another and gives to them the spirit of love.
Spiritual love, the result of community in Christ, is not something that man can manifest on his own. The only love that man can generate is human love. Human love, to Bonhoeffer is shallow and lacks the depth that only Christ can bring. “Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake.”[16] That love is manifested through and in Christ Jesus, again, where true Christian community finds its roots. It is not that love for a brother outside of a Christian community is bad; it is just selfish. That kind of love will not hold firm in the face of adversity. Spiritual love, however, when confronted will not waiver but only grow stronger for the sake of Christ. It introduces grace into the picture as well and “when grace of love shines on us, we experience the benefits of grace and are then empowered to move toward the source of grace – God.”[17] Spiritual love aids in the development of grace in the believer’s life and ultimately, in the community.
Christian community must also be rooted in the word of God.

"Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatus, but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles and promise of the whole Church.”[18]

Life together is not something that one can separate itself from the church. Life together, that is, life in community, is the church. It serves the church. It should be a piece of the body rooted in the Word. Ray Anderson says, “Those who love Christ become his body, with a common life and one heart.”[19] Community should celebrate and rally around this idea.
Ultimately, community is “bound together by a common faith.”[20] It is something that as Bonhoeffer tries to demonstrate, even holds to the tradition of the early church. What he outlines as essential features of true Christian community also serves as a continuation of what began in the New Testament early church and even continues on to this day.
So what does this type of community even look like in practice? One might think that it is difficult to find a group of Christians embracing this type of communal society in today’s world, especially in America. Fortunately, it is not that hard to find at all! There are many people who actually live in the United States who have committed themselves to living this divine reality out. And look no further than Donald Miller.
Donald Miller is a popular author among college-aged students. Like several people living in America, he had a lot of wrong impressions about Christian community. Fortunately, Miller was willing to voice those whereas others were not. In his book, Blue Like Jazz, Miller spends a chapter exploring Christian community. He appropriately titled the chapter “Community: living with freaks.”[21]
He writes about his first and longtime impressions of faith and how he always thought that is was something that people did alone, “like monks in caves,”[22] due in part to impressions that Christians leave in bookstores, that is, sending the message that “faith is something you do alone.”[23] Thankfully, Miller had an experience that shattered this view and only by and through the grace of God. He moved into a house with five other Christian guys for the sake of community. It was not something they did intentionally, but rather something that him and his housemates had the desire to do. All of them eventually “had everything in common.”
And like in any experience or community, Miller learned a lot. He said “living in community made me realize my faults: I was addicted to myself.”[24] He was not, however, able to do that without the spiritual love he found in community. The men he lived with loved him unselfishly, for the sake of Christ. Of this kind of love, Miller’s friend, Bill comments “If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.”[25] In other words, Miller learned that one could not be selfish in community without forsaking the spiritual love that the Spirit gives.
In an article by John Buchanan found in Christian Century magazine, he writes about an encounter that he had with true Christian community, as least in terms of hospitality. Buchanan’s wife’s grandfather had passed away and they had no place to hold a funeral service. The grandfather had attended a Lutheran church for about 30 years of his life, but after moving into a retirement facility, went to a Presbyterian church instead. However, when Buchanan’s family needed a place to do the funeral they did not think that the Lutheran church would let them do it there.
They could not have been more wrong. The Lutheran church that their grandfather had attended for so many years opened its doors to the Buchanans. The pastor presided at the service, the organist played the hymns, and the congregation catered a large lunch, and all of this when none of them even knew the grandfather! Buchanan says, “The hospitality was, I thought, pure grace, an act of simple, eloquent Christian love.”[26] This is also something that Christian community should be. It should be something that crosses denominational boundaries with the full knowledge that its foundation is in, and its service is to, a much higher King than what the worlds’ differences has to offer. In the words from another article in the same magazine, “it reminds us that Christian churches are connected,” especially when they come together like this.[27]
There is another article in Christian Century that also discusses community much in the way that Bonhoeffer does by saying what it is and what it is not. Apparently there was a horrible heat wave during the summer of 1995 in Chicago. Over 739 people died and unfortunately most of them died alone. Peter Marty blames the majority of those deaths on the absence of community.[28]
Marty goes on to say that the lack of community is due to the promotion of the individual that society pressures onto most people. Taking that even further, he examines this idea within Christian community. Marty clearly states what Christian community is not. “Inhabiting the same ecclesiastical space for an hour on Sunday morning is not the same as belonging to a community where your presence truly matters to others and their presence truly matters to you.”[29] This idea of community resonates with what Bonhoeffer said about the fruits that presence brings to the individual.
There is, in all sincerity, a difficulty in balancing the self, which is the beginning of an ideal the world promotes and that of a community. Marty says that a community’s actions reflect whether or not it is part of “the body of Christ or simply a religious club.”[30] This is so true. Just as an individual can know all that there is to know about love and not act on it, so can a community when it comes to living out the manifestation of God’s grace in its life.
And a community is anything but uniform, according to Marty. A true Christian community can “afford to be diverse.”[31] Without uniformity inside a Christian community, there is room for uniqueness. Better yet, there is more room for the Spirit of God to move and do its work. Again, as Bonhoeffer alludes to in Life Together, so too, does Marty. “They become captivated by a vision and get wrapped up in engaging their faith alongside the strength of others.”[32] This is part of fellowship. This is part of community. Just as the early church leaned on each other for support physically and spiritually, so must a community today, especially in this world that promotes and aids in the confusion of these truths.
There is an attempt out there to resurrect the type of Christian community that is found in the scriptures, namely in the book of Acts. Many have called it alternative Christian communities, or more or less appropriately named, “new monastic’s.” There has been a resurgence of interest in monasticism, but within the hustle and bustle of everyday living, hence, the new monasticism.
While most people within these groups may consider themselves original with their mode of thought and practice, they honestly do not differ from the life and mission of the early church. For example, they have sold all of their possessions, they share everything with each other, they practice hospitality, execute social justices, practice solidarity with the poor, and even worship together. These are all wonderful things and what these people are doing is revolutionizing community pracitices.
“Obedience means accountability not to an abbot but to Jesus and to the community.”[33] This is yet another way that new monasticism differs from some traditional monastics. The alternative Christian communities are whole-heartedly dedicated to one another but more so to the message and mission of the living Jesus, the very foundation that they build their community on.
Some of these communities are: Rutba, in North Carolina[34], Reba Place fellowship, in Illinois[35], and Church of the Servant King, in Oregon.[36] All three of these center what they do around intentional community for Christ’s sake and embrace the new monastic lifestyle. So what is the influence?

"Monastic communities have always had greater influence than their numbers. For one thing, they enable preachers and other Christians to point and say, ‘see, someone does try to live out the costly demands of Jesus with regard to possessions, family, nonviolence and love.’ Their presence also encourages more traditional churches to alter their life in small but significant ways."[37]

And perhaps this is the benefit to the practice of new monasticism. It gives searching Christian communities a model to go off of. It also serves the kingdom in a much broader and deeper way than other forms of Christian community.
True Christian community, whether looked at biblically, theologically, or practically, should always find its foundation rooted in Christ Jesus. This might be assumed to be true after examining it to this depth. Biblically community is founded around shared worship, possessions, experiences, friendships, struggles, the word of God, and even Christ Jesus. Theologically these aspects are just as important, which Bonhoeffer eloquently lies out. It is an amazing thing to see the biblical and theological aspects of community fit together so harmoniously and demonstrate the manifestations of fellowship so well. From the life of Donald Miller to the alternative Christian communities, the importance of community was hopefully implied.


[1] Community, by Robert Wall. vol. 1 of Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1103.
[2] Ibid., 1104.
[3] Ibid., 1105.
[4] Ibid., 1105.
[5] Acts 2.42-47, NKJV
[6] Acts, vol. 10 of New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 71.
[7] Ibid, 71-72.
[8] Ibid, 72.
[9] Ibid, 71.
[10]Ray S. Anderson, Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches. (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006), 101.
[11] Ibid., 45.
[12] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954), 20.
[13] Ibid., 21.
[14] Ibid., 21
[15] Bonhoeffer, 30.
[16] Bonhoeffer, 34.
[17] Ray S. Anderson, The Soul of God (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004), 101.
[18] Bonhoeffer, 37.
[19] Anderson, The Soul of God, 29.
[20] Bonhoeffer, 34.
[21] Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 175.
[22] Ibid., 175
[23] Ibid., 175
[24] Ibid., 181
[25] Ibid., 185
[26] Buchanan, John M. "Graceful presence." Christian Century 122, no. 7 (2005): 3-3. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed October 25, 2006), 3.
[27] "Radical relocation." Christian Century 122, no. 21 (2005): 5-5. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed October 25, 2006).

[28] Marty, Peter W. "Breathing together: community as a way of life." Christian Century 122, no. 17 (2005): 8-9. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed October 25, 2006), 8.
[29] Ibid., 8.
[30] Ibid., 8.
[31] Ibid., 9.
[32] Ibid., 9.
[33] "The new monastics: alternative Christian communities." Christian Century 122, no. 21 (2005): 38-47. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed October 25, 2006), 38.
[34] Ibid., 38.
[35] Ibid., 39.
[36] Ibid., 41.
[37] Ibid., 47.