One
of the consequences of the cultural shift from modernity to postmodernity is a
shift from being individual centered to being community centered. “Postmoderns
need and want community. They don’t know how to get it and they are not good at
it,” asserts Don Bartel.[1] People
need a place to belong. When the body of Christ is seen working together,
serving together and worshiping together it is attractive to disassociated
postmoderns and it buttresses the message of Christ.
A
church should be proactive and strategic about creating “communitas.”
Communitas is described as an intense spirit of community that nurtures social
equality, solidarity and togetherness. Communitas is the by-product of working
shoulder to shoulder on mission. This is especially true where there is risk
and hardship. There is no greater sense of communitas than that shared by
soldiers who have served in combat together as a unit. In the movie Band of
Brothers, the series depicts the harsh, harrowing and heroic experience of Easy
Company in Europe during WWII. There are heart-wrenching interviews of the real surviving soldiers throughout the series. I was captivated and inspired by their love, commitment and sense
of responsibility for one another after all these years. This is communitas.
These men came from different ethnic and socio-economic circumstances but the
walls were removed by sharing the mission together; an agreed upon, worthy and
hard mission to which they were called to accomplish at all cost.
The
church has an agreed upon, worthy and hard mission. And believers are called to
fulfill the mission of making disciples at great cost. When a church embraces
Christ’s mission for His church and expects believers to participate in
fulfilling the mission there is something attractive about it. Outsiders and
observers may be skeptical about the mission but they cannot deny the
camaraderie and the commitment of the faith community who has embraced and
embarked upon the mission. The church should leverage this as a witness in
their locale.
I
will illustrate the attractiveness of community and how it creates healthy
curiosity and even co-ops unbelievers into the mix. A church in our community
has adopted the task of cleaning the local high school football stadium after
Friday night football games. About twenty minutes before the end of the game
you notice several people with red-shirts throughout the stadium. They are
holding bags, sticks and blowers. After the game ends, they wait a few minutes
then jump into action. The sight of a
hundred red shirts working diligently to accomplish a singular task is pretty
intriguing. After the third game or so,
by-standers were seen helping clean up. By the middle of the season, these
by-standers were staying afterward for snacks, fellowship and prayer. This is a
microcosm of the benefit and power of communitas. Obviously the higher the
risk, sacrifice and stakes of the mission the stronger the bonds can become.
The
church community can be viewed as an outpost of heaven in a dangerous and
foreign land. We are ambassadors, are we not? When the Word is faithfully and
fitfully proclaimed and leadership is willing to ask hard things of
believers, a sense of communitas becomes an evangelistic asset to the local
church. What did Jesus mean when He said the children of this generation are
wiser than the children of light in their generation? I do not believe that it
is a stretch to receive this as a rebuke of American church legalistic pettiness,
lack of excellence in the arts, unwillingness to throw caution to the wind,
fear of true community service because we might “compromise” the Gospel. It is
only compromised by our lack of Gospel-compelled action, sacrifice and love.
Community
mission effort does two things: it accomplishes the feeling of a shared
experience that strengthens our bonds as a body and it attracts the unchurched
and skeptics to see what we are doing and why. We now have people that come and
help us that are unchurched. They share in the experience with us and begin to
feel as though they belong. This becomes a form of pre-conversion discipleship
and it provides a strong relational foundation for the sharing of the Gospel
message. Postmoderns need to feel like they belong before they will hear.[2]
For
years, many churches have made short-term mission trips off limits to
unbelievers. Some churches are beginning to rethink this position with the
right conditions. Short-term mission trips create a sense of communitas that is difficult to replicate
within similar cultures. When we go to the Andes of Peru to evangelize in a
mountain community our team struggles together, eats together, learns together,
and fails together. When these teams arrive back in the states that have a bond
that is unique and potent. Postmoderns need to see this interaction and
experience it before they can embrace it. This sense of community is only
obtained when a church is intentional about creating and displaying it. Maybe
this is one reason that God calls us “co-laborers” with Him (1 Cor. 3:9).
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