The Community

"Community" is a buzz-word these days, especially with the church.  Every new church (or old church with the same old people inside but a brand new name and sign outside) is a "community church" now.  (To be fair, the same can be said of local banks.)  The theory is that the church offers something that modern people still crave--a sense of community (among other things like salvation).  People are desperate to feel a sense of belonging, and the church is good for that (or should be).

I'm one of these crazy people that think I should be able to trace what the church does to what the church did in the Bible.  That's not to say that we can't change methodology, but rather that we should be working towards the same ends.  Where is the community in the Bible?

I think the most significant and possibly the most obvious case of the church being a place of community is in the example of Jesus and the Twelve.  Jesus and his posse lived and worked together for three years, and in the end, eleven of the thirteen of them would be killed for their work.  (John wasn't martyred, Judas left the team.)  What was the drawing force that brought these men together?  Where was the tie that took twelve random guys from a bunch of nobodies to the leadership of a movement that turned the world as they knew it completely upside down?

It is unlikely that the Twelve were
chosen merely for their glowing heads.

Other than being Jewish males, there wasn't a lot in common.  One, Simon the Zealot, is believed to have come from a group of people who wanted to throw off Roman rule, often by murdering Roman soldiers caught with their guard down.  Another, Matthew, was a tax collector who had decided to cash in by throwing his lot in with the Romans.  We know that James, John, Andrew, and Peter were fishermen.  These were hard-working guys, but definitely of a different social class than a tax collector.  Outside of this group, Matthew wouldn't have been caught dead hanging out with those fishermen--but may have possibly been caught dead (literally) hanging out with Simon the Zealot.  We don't even know what kind of career half the disciples had before coming together.

Compare that to the modern American church.  In my experience, 80% of a local congregation is going to be of the same social class, 90% of them will be of the same skin tone, 10% of them will be actively involved in the operations of the church, and they will be far more likely to die of a workplace accident caused by their own behavior than to give sacrificially to the church or to a person in need.

There is only one thing the Twelve had in common, really, and that was Jesus.  Jesus wasn't something they were interested in on Sunday (you know, as long as it doesn't interfere with watching the game).  He wasn't first in their lives--he was first, second, third, and last.  Like them, we have to keep the main thing the main thing (and it isn't ourselves, in case you got confused there), and we can't expect too much until we get that part right.

Beyond that, every single one of them were what we'd call a "heavy contributor."  There's precious little to be gained from being one of the "lurkers."