Opening the Door to Community

The need to open the door to spiritual community has been on my mind for a good while now.  While I think it is a vital cog in how God shapes our lives, I haven’t been able to get a handle on a definition or list its key dynamics.   A new book provided some clarity the other day – Becoming a True Spiritual Community: A Profound Vision of What the Church Can Be by Larry Crabb.

 “Brokenness is a condition, one that is always there, inside, beneath the surface, carefully hidden for as long as we can keep a façade in place.  We live in brokenness.  We just don’t always see it, either in ourselves or in others.  A central task of community is to create a place that is safe enough for walls to be torn down, safe enough for each of us to own and reveal our brokenness.  We’re all struggling.  Beneath the surface of every personality – even the one that seems most ‘together’ – a spiritual battle is raging that will only be won with the help of community.

 “I propose thinking of a healing community as providing two kinds of relationships: spiritual friendship, which exists among spiritually minded peers who share their lives together, and spiritual direction, which takes place when time is specially set aside for one person to present his or her life to a respected (not always familiar) person who agrees to listen, pray, think and speak…”

 The four messages communicated within our spiritual community:

1.   “We accept you – we celebrate your purity in Christ, as we worship God.

2.   We believe in you – we envision your identity in Christ and what you can become as we trust God.

3.   We see you and are glad to stay involved – we discern your good passions and delight in them; we discern your bad passions and know they do not define you, as we ourselves continue to grow in Christ.

4.   We give to you – we apply no pressure to change you.  The power to change is already in you.  We give you what is most alive in us with the prayer that it will set you free to indulge your deepest desires, as we eagerly obey God.” 

 How about you…have you found an open door to this kind of spiritual community?