Day 18 - Experiencing Life Together
Tuesday, November 30th, 2004
Each one of you is part of the body of Christ, and you were chosen to live together in peace.
Colossians 3:15 (CEV)How wonderful it is, how pleasant, for God’s people to live together in harmony!
Psalm 133:1 (TEV)
Rick Warren in this chapter gives us a list of the benefits of living in ‘real fellowship’. We’re able to experience authenticity, mutuality, sympathy, and mercy.
So why does Rick have to lay these out like he does? Because many of his readers, including me, have had too many tastes of pseudo community. Fake community where we’ve said ‘we share a common life’ but haven’t in fact lived it out. In many cases we haven’t even got close enough with each other to fall out. In others we’ve got so entangled with other members of the Christian community that it’s been hard to recognise our genuine selves. In too many cases our experience of Christian community has been dominated by the dysfunction of leaders or community members. And we’ve met up with people who lack the grace to show sympathy and mercy when we’ve suffered or fallen.
So Rick paints again the vision of what it could and should be like.
It’s interesting that Rick writes this chapter with the small group in mind. He’s not talking about the shallow fellowship experienced after celebratory worship services. He’s not talking about the comaradarie experienced in enduring committee meetings together. He’s talking about groups in which people are vulnerable with one another and are committed to one another.
When I think of the small group communities I’ve experienced positively, I think of cell groups at University. I was a member of a TSCF cell group at Knox College, Dunedin at a point in which I was experiencing the breakdown of my fundamentalism and the development of a fresh approach to Christian faith. My emergence with an ongoing faith is indebted to my fellow small group members who showed authenticity, mutuality, sympathy and mercy. I still need that kind of community around me.