Elements of Community - Sense of Sharing

This post attempts to take one step beyond the former post, moving from an emphasis on Us to Our. In community, we ought to feel like there are elements of life that are not merely mine but ours. As a former mathlete, the Venn Diagram comes to mind (see above). The Venn Diagram captures this element of community in which we don't merely come side by side, but we actually overlap. The circles do not bleed into each other and lose their circularity. Instead, they bond over a common space. The common space in communities should be the following: obedience and interaction with God, future hopes, responsibility for others, pains, victories, space and possessions. These shared experiences will be the byproducts of our shared mission and will bear witness to the legitimacy of our ties to one another. To the degree that we attempt to partition these areas off from those to whom we are committed, we will experience a death of sorts. (See II Cor 9:1-15, Acts 4:32)

I feel like I learn a lot from Brazilians about sharing possessions, responsibility and space. When I drove the VW Van into the sewer drainage ditch, all the locals adopted the task of getting the van out as if it were their problem. If a guy in the house buys a package of cookies, these cookies inevitably make their way around the table. During our prayer group in the morro this morning, three chairs were placed side by side to make a bench for five kids to sit on. Recently, Claudinho complained to Carol and I about not giving him a heads up before visitors arrive. According to him, any visitor to the house becomes our visitor. I liked the way he expressed this. Carol and the guys in our house are great examples for me in these arenas.

However, I am always humbled when I read about the church in Acts. Those guys sold stuff so that others could live. They shared joys when experiencing growth and hope when being persecuted. I think they shared their brokenness and humanity far more than we do here. We in the house still buy into the lie that we can only share what's working; the broken stuff gets stuffed or fenced off. While we have made some strides over this last year, we still need to learn how to share more of who we are rather than merely what we have. The cliche alarm is sounding, but I'm have going to have to conclude with that statement.

Elements of Community - Sense of Belonging

Belonging speaks to our sense of identity. Defining self in relation to the people with whom we are connected seems somewhat off by contemporary standards. Instead, personal identity is perceived as a rather individual and autonomous pursuit, something you discover alone on some remote mountain in Southern Asia. However, do any of us truly arrive at an accurate assessment of self without the context of Jesus and His body? I believe that I demands the context of a He and an Us. Consider this. All the ways I define myself depend on others in some way. My gifts are only gifts because they serve someone else - not my ego. My weaknesses and limitations surface because of my interaction with those around me. My love needs a Source and an object. Any attempt to articulate who I am will result in dragging you and God into the conversation. This sounds suffocating. However, the fact that my identity is inextricably tied to God and His people does not mute my individuality. Instead, it accentuates it, creating an opportunity for its expression. Healthy communities seem to transmit this sense of Us while acknowledging we are His. I resonates with this vertical and horizontal sense of belonging. In this way, we depart from Cain's path. Where he stepped back from God and balked at being his brother’s keeper, we must embrace such. (Hosea 2:2, Neh 2:1-4; Ruth 1:15-18).

As for the Sombra Road house, I see this sense of Us in the way we define victories and defeats. Paulo gets a job, and Claudinho celebrates with the same enthusiasm as Paulo. Claudinho breaks up with his girlfriend, and Adilio feels it. It goes beyond just win-win. I also detect a sense of belonging in the way we deal with each other's junk. Each guy is called to pull their own weight, while overwhelming burdens are intended to be carried by all. These are not confused boundaries; the lines have merely been recast in light of the gospel.

I conclude with one final footnote on the sense of belonging essential to community, as this element of my past is etched on my memory as the essence of this concept of Us. When we were kids, my two younger brothers and I would make up all types of random games. My brother Brian was the chief architect, and his games all shared one common trait - all three of us were on the same team. He would set up the game in such a way so that the three of us were competing against an imaginary opponent - typically called the Yankees or some other team we generally disliked. Then, we'd play it out. Interestingly enough, we would not rig the game so that we would necessarily win. Sometimes we did lose, but we lost together. It's now a joke between us when we play a game as to whether we are going to play it straight up or Brian style. Still, I wish there were more room for Brian games in the way we live.

Elements of Community - Mission

Community is not just a static group of navel gazers that enjoy each other’s company. Community has an outward vector, a direction. This means that people live in community with an end in mind. It is this end that helps solidify the bond between the individual members. As my friend David says, most examples of healthy communities follow the Lego Principle. People, like legos, do not join side by side. In order to connect and enduringly remain together, they demand a common link above and below. The link above is our common connection to the Father, while the link below is this fundamental commitment to mission. In a broad sense, our mission is to serve as a witness to all that Jesus is accomplishing in the space between us, while inviting outsiders in to experience the same. In this way, mission is just as much about loving inward as looking outward. Vanier clarifies this in his book Community and Growth when he asserts, “I am convinced that a community can flourish only if its aim is outside of itself.” (See John 10:10, Matthew 10:5, Matthew 28:16-20, Romans 15:20)

Before this house, my view of mission was far too limited in its scope. While true mission entails saying no to certain things in order to say yes to others, I was far too satisfied at times with just the no's. Let me explain. The ascetic lifestyle always maintained a certain allure to me. Something about a streamlined life of measured simplicity stripped of creature comforts in the name of a greater good seemed sexy in a way. So, when I moved into the orphanage, I bought a mattress and slept on the floor. Paint on the walls was deemed a luxury, food was relegated to tasteless fuel and my wardrobe was trimmed to blue, black and gray t-shirts. It was during this time that my friend Will confessed that video skyping with me made him feel depressed. The drab, empty backdrop of my room made him feel as if he were talking with someone holed up in a bomb shelter. But, it answered something in me. I felt free and deliberate. I felt as if I were living with a mission. I had defined my life through my sacrifices. I was deluded. But, here's the scary reality. I think most of us are. If we're honest, it is easier to define our faith through the sacrifices we make than through manifestations of love. We are not loving others; we're looking for a better version of us. I had not yet learned that all sacrifices are embraced with someone else's best in mind, banking on the hope that God will ressurect life in both me and others where there is only death.

Mission looks different to me now. It's more about what He's doing for us than what I'm doing for Him. I just have to keep up with Him and be accessible to others. In this way, mission surges in almost everything because no activity is too small for Him to inhabit. Playing poker, entertaining guests, preparing a Sunday meal or buying groceries - nothing is off limits. For our part, this demands a vigilance and an active looking outward. It is not enough that we're cool with each other. As long as there are strangers, our mission continues. There is the image of two young Moravian men who sold themselves into a lifetime of slavery, waving goodbye to their families for the last time, one shouting from the boat, "May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering." And I thought mission was eating ramen noodles out of the only bowl you own.

Elements of Community - Mystery

Let me begin with a confession. I have a tough time saying "I don't know." When posed with a Why?, I feel as if it is my moral obligation to respond to it. I've even been know to throw in a "They say..." to justify my point, simply because it seems to lend credibility to my argument. I am enfatuated with reasons, motives and consistency therein. Give me cogent explanations of life that dovetail into a practical, if not empirical, worldview, and I'll feel a certain buzz.

Now, the problem with people like me is our quiet aversion to the concept of mystery. Our tendency is to try to mitigate or minimize it through our explanations. If we're honest, we villify mystery as something akin to ambiguity. Yet for all my attempts to explain mystery away, life in community beckons me to embrace it. The degree to which we have been united with God and each other and the manner through which this unity was achieved are nothing less than surreal. Words about such truths are not intended to fence in these realities but to give way to wonder. Mystery allows the more subtle, yet most significant, truths to come to life. It also protects us from trivializing the idea of just being together. We escape the wrong-headed mentality that we are what we do and begin to find wonder in that which we are accustomed to overlook. (See Job 26:14, Eph 5:32)


I see mystery in the way God brought the five of us together. People constantly ask how a pasty, white American, a seminarian from the Northeast, two orphans from Sao Goncalo and a girl from Ipanema (or Rio at the very least) ended up under the same roof. We fumble for answers, but there is something inexplicably divine to our bond. There is also this pervasive sense of mystery in discussing the future of the guys. They, just like us, sense they are a part of something special and are being prepared for the same. Then, there are the nights we worship together. Since none of us play an instrument, we'll find songs on YouTube and sing along. But, those nights are much bigger than five people (at least one of which being tone deaf) huddled around a computer screen. Finally, I am reminded of all the moments of silence where we are just with each other. There is no compulsion to fill the space with nervous conversation. The silence is not perceived as a threat or a void. There is just us, and that doesn't demand an excuse or a reason.    

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. 


   

Sight (Jeremy)

On Monday afternoon, after a morning of random errands, I'm in a neighboring bairro (think burrough) trying to catch a bus home. The sidewalk on which I'm standing, not measuring more than 4 feet in width, is situated between a 8 foot high railway wall and a busy, three-laned road where buses and cars barrel past at speeds exceeding 60 mph. Hailing a bus in such a location demands both visual acuity and spastic arm motions. While I'm waiting, another bus pulls up to the stop and three passengers get off. There is a young man with a guitar, his girlfriend and another gentleman in gray engaging the two in conversation. The three of them cross at the intersection, and then they part company - the young couple to the right and the other man to the left. At this point, the man in gray pulls out a walking stick and begins to tap it in front of him. I observe for a few moments as he ambles down the sidewalk. When he makes it to a section that is particularly narrow, he begins to lean against the wall and feel his way down the road. At that point, I approach him and ask if I can walk besides him to wherever he's going. He graciously accepts.

"Where are you heading?" I ask, hoping he knows the way because I don't know the area that well.

"To the Association for the Blind - just up the road to the right." he responds.

"My name is Jeremy. I'm not from around here."

"I could tell. I'm Wesley. I'm not from around here either."

He then goes on to share with me how he's originally from the northeastern part of Brazil. He came to Rio because he met a girl on-line. I'm quite amused by this, and we talk for a while. He tells me a little about his life here - how he works making brooms at the Association and hangs out with this girl on the weekends. We make it to the door of the Association and exchange cell phone numbers. Then, I ask him if he would like for me to help him inside.

"No," he replies, "I can get around here with my eyes closed."

As I'm walking back to the bus stop, I am genuinely humbled. As much as I would like to be free from such, I am not above preening myself for random acts of service. But, in this case, at this particular moment, I am not tempted with such vanity. Instead, I genuinely recognize that I am much more blessed to have met him than he me. His humor, his refusal to complain (even though the bus driver had missed his stop by a long shot), his humble strength and transparency - it was like a deep breath. I thought about Jesus' perspective on such people, specifically that the broken are a gift and not a burden. In most situations, that truth is not as tangible as it is with Wesley, but I think we find its subtle veracity in our own lives if we give ourselves time to reflect. And I am left wondering how many God-oriented lessons in Wesley-shaped frames I've missed just because I'm in a hurry to make the next bus.