Community is like a diamond. Often hard to find, but once found held precious and one of the most valuable things you will have. Also like a diamond, community is hard. Community is hard to build, hard to maintain, it takes time and attention… community can be exhausting. Baked into community are people with different stories, different pain points, and different expectations.
Community can feel even more complicated when you add the word Christian in front of it. eek. I cringe at the phrase “Christian Community”. What a buzzword. Nonetheless, Christian community is incredibly important for followers of Christ. You will hear it all the time, “we aren’t meant to do life alone” and yeah that is true. You will be hard pressed to make a Biblical argument to the opposite. Why would you? No one wants to do life alone.
So how do you build Christian community? Honestly… I don’t really know. Well, I guess I know some basic principles, but how do you go out into the world and make it happen? That can be complicated. For me, it took years to get where I am with the relationships I have. I imagine its much like anything else, you keep taking faithful steps in the right direction and the sovereignty of God takes care of the rest.
But that’s not the point of this blog.
The point of this blog is to breathe easy and invite you (and myself) into a community of grace. Community, Christian or not, is going to have unmet expectations, hurt, anger, and sadness. Just because community is “Christian” does not mean it is without those very human experiences. People are messy and they are going to mess up. So are you and me. Even without mess ups, people sometimes feel hurt because of unmet expectations or projections from their stories and trauma. This is a part of the human experience.
If the community you are a part of is a mixture of males and females then these pressure points will be amplified. As it has been well documented, men and women think differently. That’s beautiful, its a part of God’s design. It can also make it feel like you are speaking two different languages sometimes. I assure you, its English, it’s just coming from a life experience that is far different than yours.
All this to say, what if the cornerstone of community was grace? I acknowledge this is coming from a guy who has messed up in every relationship he’s had in some way. I need grace. Don’t we all? Don’t you?
We are all on a different road of sanctification. Some of us are farther along in areas than others and vice versa. We all have our baggage and blind spots. God is working in each of us in different ways for different reasons. What if we recognized that and chose to see the good in one another?
Maybe the reason community is so hard is because intimacy brings to light the best and worst in us. We joyfully accept the best but shrink away at the worst. What if instead of shrinking away we leaned in through the grace afforded us in Christ? Not to dismiss any of the hurt. Hurt must be addressed and talked about, that’s how forgiveness and restoration can occur. May we leave the altar to be reconciled with our brother (Matthew 5:24).
If your Christian community is truly made up of Christians then aren’t they working towards sanctification too? Aren’t they going to mess up at some point. How can we claim to walk in Christian community while harboring bitterness and unforgiveness towards a brother or sister who loves Christ and yet is human?
Christians are united by the grace they have received in Christ. Shouldn’t Christian community reflect that grace?
Christian community needs this grace so much more than worldly community because in Christian community iron is sharpening iron and thats sharp stuff. We are bound to get cut. God is doing something through Christian community, he is growing, pruning, sanctifying all of us and he’s using one another to do it.
What if we looked at the messy, sinful, dirty, cringey, seemingly unloveable parts of one another as the light of grace reflecting off of God’s pruning shears and when the light fades may we see our own reflection as those perfectly polished shears head towards us.
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