Elements of Community - Expressed Dependence upon God (Jeremy and David)

A healthy community expresses its dependence upon God both repeatedly and overtly. This reliance is not a mere formality, something assumed just because we are a Christian community. Instead, it is a discipline that is celebrated and pursued as the only way that we will see tomorrow together. We tend to romanticize community, thinking it's the natural product of assembling a group of well-intentioned individuals. But, that's not how it plays out in my life. If I get really close to Paulo, I start to get frustrated with his carelessness - more specifically, how many glasses he breaks when he washes dishes. So, I begin to think Paulo is the problem. But, if I'm honest, is my caustic response to him any less subversive to our pursuit of being one than his carelessness? He's tanking our community, but I'm no less the saboteur. The enemy is in the camp. When everyone in the camp is compromised to some degree, you have to look outward for a Savior. And this Savior doesn't save you from community; He saves you through it. In this way, we become dependent upon each other, since ‘each other’ is most often the means by which God does his works of transformation in us.  We must come to understand that the core callings of life - the Great Commission, our sanctification, and the glorifying of God - are all team sports.  (1 Cor. 12:21; Eph 4:16; John 17:21-23; Mat. 18:20)

The most consistent example of how the Sombra Road House expresses our dependence upon God is our times of communal prayer. Carol, Adilio and Paulo ride to work together, praying in the car as they go. Claudinho and I pray at the kitchen table. Our prayers are pleas for God to help us understand and live Jesus' prayer in John 17. Then, there are the moments of frustration with each other when dependence upon God looks like petitions for patience, humility and the courage to confront. Claudinho confronts me for my impatience in driving. He prays that I may hear, and I'm asking God to silence my ego which so wants rationalize some defense. Sometimes, guys like Anderson choose to leave the house. In these moments, dependence upon God manifests itself in our continued prayers that Anderson would be led back into community with us. When we are driving to the morro for soccer class, we are asking God to give us words and love that speak into these kids' lives.

Still, we have much to learn in the area of dependence upon God. I see how revisiting the way we buy groceries, pay bills, receive visitors and observe the Sabbath could all lead us to greater understanding of our true need for Him. But, this is nothing in comparison to how we in the house have to learn to depend upon God by becoming dependent upon one another. We are all a bit too contaminated with the notion that our spiritual walk is merely a vertical issue - God and I. I am hopeful that we will grow to embrace our need for one another as another expression of our greater need for God.   

Community

"...that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."   John 17:21

This isn't a inspirational wall calendar verse. For me, it's more like slipping on wet tile and falling so hard on my back that I get the wind knocked out of me. Why? Because it takes a truth that is so foundational to my existence - the unity of Jesus and the Father - and ties it invariably to another truth that couldn't seem more foreign to my experience - that being the unity between believers. Most of us from the West do not have trouble understanding our relationship with God as something personal or individual. Spiritual disciplines and personal behaviors lend themselves quite adequately to articulating this relationship between God and self. But, where God and I is a manageable concept for us, God and we is extremely elusive. Simply put, I cannot seem to trace the dots between you and me and Him. Lamentably, this exaggerated emphasis upon personal experiences with God at the expense of a communal relationship with Him ultimately diverts our eyes from seeing Jesus. The collective we that Jesus introduces in His prayer takes a sword to the inflated individualism that lies at the root of this blindness. I see the Sombra Road Home as a gift, but also as a blade of this sword that is intended to challenge our individualistic inclinations.

This past weekend, Carol, the guys and I travelled about two hours outside of Rio for our first spiritual retreat. We called it Retreat 2011 because that is about the extent of our creativity when it comes to naming things. The purpose of the retreat was to ask God to grow within us a greater understanding and practice of community in order that "the world may believe that He sent Jesus." We carried into the weekend a list of 13 elements that tend to surface in a healthy community of believers. This list was compliled from our experiences, those of friends and those of authors of books dealing with this concept. I thought it may give you a better understanding of what God is doing here by sharing one of these elements each week and the way it plays out in our community. The intention in talking about these elements is not to fence in this reality so that it becomes a manageable concept or a strategy that we can implement. The goal is to find a handle to grab onto, so that we can begin to live community and submit to God’s plans for us in it. My prayer is that God would grow our identification with one another and with Him.