For sometime now I have heard that many are tired of being in a church with so many divisions or so many points of disagreement. This fatigue has provoked some to inquire or even leave the Church in order to be with other “like-minded” Christians. The virtues of being with “like-minded” believers is argued for in many places such as the book the Benedict Option to caucus groups such as the Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA).
There is nothing wrong with being with like minded people. It is good to be with like-minded people as it gives a peace and comfort knowing that I am not alone. The defining characteristic of a like-minded group is that the group is held together by what they have.
There is a name for a group of people who are together because of what they have. It is called a community. A community is a group of people who belong to one another because of something they all have or hold in common. The Benedict Option and WCA advocate the creation of like-minded communities. This seems innocuous enough. Like I said above, like-minded communities have many benefits.
The problem is that when we take the idea of community into the Church because the Church is not supposed to be a community.
In a very basic sense, a community does not fundamentally challenge one another to change because to do so would threaten the communities very existence. If members of the community change, then the community may not all hold the same thing in common. If members of my bowling community started to dislike bowling, then the bowling community would politely ask those members to leave and not come back. Because what makes the bowling community the bowling community is the shared loved of bowling. If some members of the community no longer like bowling, then group may not be all “like-minded”.
Additionally, at the core, communities are groups that are motivated by purity. If there is anyone in the group that is not of “like-mind” then they cannot be a member of the community because a community is only possible if the entire group is of like mind. There is little appreciation for the one who is not like the community (impure). The community that has some members who deviate from the communities norm, are asked to leave. In fact asking the “other” to leave is considered graceful. I cannot imagine being asked to leave the community is grace-filled, but communities that hold the same ideas as the reason for existence are convinced that this is graceful.
Peter Rollins makes a point in this 90 second clip in which he talks about a community and a communion. He reminds the viewer that the community is gathered by what they have or what they share. But a communion is gathered around a lack or by something the group does not have. For instance, Alcohol Anonymous (AA) is a group that gathers around a shared lack (ex: lack of alcohol) and loss (ex: loss of control). The group is made not on what they achieve or what they have done, but on what they each lack and/or loss.
Each Sunday, Christians around the world gather together to share in the sacrament sometimes called Communion. It is the sacred meal in which calls to mind the time that God in Christ ritualized the death of God on the cross.
The death of God is terrifying. It is the ultimate lack. It is the thing that so many of us (self included) refuse to accept because it is too much to consider that the eternal and all powerful God would enter death - even temporarily. The church is a gathering of people who recognize we have lack (sometimes we call it sin).
The church, each week, gathers together not because we all are of “like-mind” or all hold the same thing. The core of the Church gathers together because of what we lack. We gather because we lack forgiveness, mercy, and grace toward ourselves and others. Like Jesus said, we do not know what we are doing and we lack the way to go. We are in need of God because the communion of the church knows it is not God.
The Church is much too sacred and important to be a community. The Church is a communion.