“we have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community” - dorothy day

there’s no question, at the refuge, we believe spiritual transformation happens through community. it is not the only way. there are lots of ways to experience God, grow in our relationship with God, and learn a lot about God. Jesus transforms in many wonderful ways. but we also wholeheartedly believe that the greatest work of our spiritual journey will happen through relationships, true authentic community. the reason why this usually gets pushed to the bottom of the list when it comes to church programming is that it is by far the hardest thing to do. lasting, true authentic community doesn’t come in a contrived program. it can’t be talked into people. it has to be created, cultivated. it is messy, it is scary, it is unpredictable. most of us aren’t that great at it. plus, the selling points aren’t the most marketable. in fact, there are a few 100% guarantees when it comes to authentic community:

- you will be annoyed
- it will be time consuming
- you will get hurt and frustrated

100% guaranteed. there’s some good odds! but we do believe there are so many upsides to actually giving your heart, time, self to the body of Christ and allowing others in instead of just protecting yourself by only “serving others” or staying on the fringes. we believe that authentic community will be the place where we learn grace. where we learn to give it. where we learn to receive it. grace can never be theoretical. that is why no amount of sermonizing or scripturizing can teach it. it’s only through authentic community that we can come radically in touch with our humanness, our brokenness, our selfishness, our desire to be loved and truly known (even though it can be terrifying).

so the refuge is deeply committed to creating the kind of sacred space where authentic community has the greatest chance of actually happening. a few weeks ago when we talked about the spiritual discipline of incarnational relationships, sam & tiera trujillo shared with us 7 marks of authenticity in a community. (check out the blog sam edits geography of grace–it has some great stuff on it). these are marks we desire of our culture. they are the things we will keep at the center of our community as guides for our future. they will help us not lose sight of why we do certain things even though they can be annoying.

7 marks of authenticity in a community:

1. be real.
“the prayer that precedes all other prayers is may the real I meet the real Thou.” C.S. Lewis

no need to hide. just put it out there, the real story. the body of Christ should be the one place where you don’t need to pretend.

2. risk.
“test the possibility that in one’s own voice is the voice of another’s suppressed longing.” Krasner and Joyce

our hope is that we will continue to create spaces at our large and smaller gatherings where people experiment with crazy ways of connecting with God, each other. that there’s always this little degree of discomfort that keeps us moving, considering, challenged instead of remaining passive. at the end of the year we want to look back on some things we’ve tried and say “well, we will never do that again, but we’re glad we tried.” we’re not trying to push people because we are sadistic (yes, we know it can sometimes feel that way!) we just think communities need to be willing to experiment and try instead of only rely on “the sure thing that sells and makes people feel good.”

3. question.
“the beautiful answer is always preceded by the more beautiful question.” e.e. cummings

a place to question, a place to doubt, a place to not get certain answers crammed down your throat. this is very important to us.

4. dialogue.
dialogue is the reminder that something can happen not merely “to” us and “in” us but also “between” us. Martin Buber

authentic community can never be created when we aren’t talking together, back and forth. when only leaders get to talk and everyone else just sits and listens. conversation is where the action happens and sometimes we don’t notice it until we think about it later.

5. honor holy failure.
“my idea of God is not a divine idea. it has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself…this shattering is one of the marks of his presence.” C.S. Lewis

well clearly we are really good at failing. we honor it. our motto: “at least we tried.”

6. laugh.
“God gave us an imagination to console us who we aren’t, and a sense of humor to console us for who we are.” Francis Bacon

laughing at ourselves. laughing and crying at the same time. it’s our favorite thing. no need to take ourselves so darn seriously. life’s too hard without a lot of laughing.

7. love one another.
“beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ” 1 John. 4:11

that’s the big idea. without love, we are nothing. talking about love means little. actually practicing loving the unlovable, letting others love the unlovable parts of us. passing on love to our neighbors. now that’s the real deal.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 at 9:18 pm and is filed under church stuff, community, dreams, the refuge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.