Community
“Christian community,” “being in community”, and “having community” are all buzz words right now for many people in the Christian world. What we mean when we talk about community is there’s a sense of our lives intersecting, of connecting in a way that makes sense and that brings Christ to the center.
Well, I experienced community in three ways this week: first, in the Home Office right here in Villanova. You know, I love these people, and I love the way we relate to one another. I begin to see us having fun together and praying together.
Recently, Bryce asked our people to evaluate our devotional schedule. We have a group called the Building Climate Committee, and they simply give advice to Bryce, who is in charge of the Home Office, about what can make this place better. They suggested that for two weeks each month we pray in small groups, two or three together, for each other. The third week of the month, we pray alone – we sign up for fifteen minutes of time in the Heritage Room to pray. And the last week of the month, we get together as an entire community to pray.
Something powerful is happening here. The Home Office is beginning to feel that we not only work together, but we follow Christ together, and we are willing to do what it takes to advance this mission.
The second place I experienced community is in our little church, Sanctuary. It’s a great place. We just moved to a new building, and it seems there’s a new energy. But, you know, I find community there when I go early and we’re setting up chairs and our sound system and driving our U-Haul trucks to the school we rent. We have about thirty or forty minutes to hang out, to sort of just be there.
I mix with Vietnam veterans and police officers and firemen and financial planners and real estate agents who are all there to do one thing – to work to set up church so that it will take place at 10:00 on Sunday morning. There’s community in working together. Just as it is in the Home Office, it also happens in our church called Sanctuary.
But I was also surprised about a third place I found community – it was back at St. David’s Episcopal Church. I live in California, where if it’s built before 1960, it’s old. I told you in the last post that I worshipped in a building almost 300 years old. Around that building is a graveyard with lots of graves. Some graves are of soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War.
I asked Ray Kraftson, “Are you going to be buried here?”
He looked at me and said, “Yes.”
I thought to myself, It’s because this is where he has spent his life. This is his community, his faith community: St. David’s Church. He’s part of that. He has a family history in that church, so why wouldn’t he want to be buried on the church grounds?
You know, I always thought it was kind of silly to go to Europe and see all these churches with all these graves. But this felt different. It felt like even in death, we could make a statement about where our faith community is.
It’s my prayer that we at AMF, with all our diversity and all our different backgrounds – even our different ways of expressing our love and faith in God – will experience community, as well.
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