Final blog from Brian Heasley on what can go wrong in Christian Communities of all kinds, and what makes it better.

Atrophic communities




I was listening to a talk by a great friend of mine called Graham, who when he was young had a really bad motorbike accident, this led to his arm being in plaster for many months. The doctors became very concerned that his arm would suffer from atrophy, actually I think it did.

Graham likened communities that didn't connect with the worlds they where placed in to a limb suffering from atrophy!

Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. In the case of his arm it was what is known as disuse atrophy!

Interestingly if something isn't used it partially or completely wastes away. I wonder if communities can become atrophic if they don't flex their community engagement muscles? Or in old school terms communities that aren't evangelistic will waste away partially or completely.

Resting inside the plaster caste of the churches we may have created are the rotting disused limbs of a once vibrant, fit and healthy body.

Interestingly atrophy can be turned around by exercise.

Just more thoughts, on a roll here......

You can check out Grahams talk HERE

Thanks again, Brian

More on community living





Community is such a broad word, it comes in so many different forms and we all experience community in a variety of ways throughout our lives. The communities of large and small families, the communities we experience in school, or at work, the communities we meet in pubs the communities that are villages or towns. All sorts of community.

Anyway, what am I looking for in community? Which in itself is a strange way of phrasing it. Instantly the question becomes about what I want not about what I can contribute.

If I approach community as a consumer and not a contributor it will never really leave me with any sense of fulfillment.

1.
A place where I can be myself but not a place where myself won't be challenged to change. Although I need to be accepted for who I am, I need to feel secure enough to be vulnerable and allow people in, to challenge and help me grow.

2.
True community will not allow you to be invisible. Which is scary. In the condensed forms of christian community I have experienced here in Ibiza invisibility is the one thing I have found different from being part of a larger church community, when it's small you can't hide.

3.
Community with a purpose. One of the things that gives our community life is its sense of outward focus. We live for something beyond ourselves. A community that just exists to worship and pray and feed the christian sheep, will ossify and lose ground. The momentum of mission will sustain christian communities.

4.
Community need an emphasis on growth, which is almost the same as purpose. Although you can get a community that is involved in social justice and has great purpose without a sense of looking to be added to. A community that is seeking to make disciples is a true christian community.

5.
A prayerful community, this goes almost without saying. Although we can get so caught up in the work that we forget to pray. I heard one christian leader say he thought we could do 85% of what we do with the holy spirit!! A prayerful community should lead us to become a Holy Spirit dependent community. I love liturgy but this is also the thing that scares me about liturgy, the words without the spirit can become dead and just vane repetition. Even daily rhythms of prayer can be become dead lifeless acts and if we are not careful we get a form of pride that comes from us being repetitive and persistent.

6.
A generous community, a willingness to share and give. A willingness to sacrifice. If a community is generous this will affect its outlook in so many ways. When you come together instead of it being about your needs a generous community will be looking out for others needs. Generosity has so little to do with money and so much to do with heart.

7.
A community has to learn to rest. A restful community will give space for people to rejuvenate and truly live. I have been in churches where everyone is so busy they just don't appear rested, the programme grinds them into the ground. Sabbath for most churches can be a very busy time. The art of rest is something we must perfect if we are going to be truly counter cultural. We live in a cash rich time poor society, community must give people time, value time and allow people to take time out.

8.
A learning community, we must always have a willingness to learn. A community that can't be told from outside that it needs to change or thinks it has got it all right is in danger of being arrogant. Yes we must be confident in the path we have chosen but we must marry that confidence with the humility to learn. Knowledge speaks and wisdom listens, we must be wise enough to listen. We don't have all the answers.

9.
Communities need mothers and fathers. Without the input and help of older wiser more mature people we will never grow up!

10.
Communities must love and keep loving, show grace and keep showing grace. We will never arrive we will always keep growing, evolving but we must do all this in the spirit of love. We can't sacrifice people along the way. Love has to be the centre if we keep loving we'll keep growing.

You may have noticed I haven't mentioned Jesus, well not by name, but He's there He's in all of these points without His example community wouldn't work.

Brian Heasley has kindly allowed us to reproduce some thoughts from his blog, based on his experiences in Ibiza. Thanks, Brian!

Community Living




Had few people ask me about the challenges of community living, here are my top ten challenges:

1.
Community living and communal living are two very different beasts, we all live in various forms of community but we don't all live communally. I think it is important to make this distinction, communal living is often held up as the zenith and holy grail of all things community. Biblically it isn't a model you read about. The israelites were a community of people yet they all had their own tents!

2.
If you do go for a communal living experiment, you may have had people living with you before. You need to realise there is a big difference between people living with you and people sharing with you. When people move into your home, no matter how chilled you are, they will live by your rules or your unspoken code of living. When you share everyone gets a say in how to live, how to set up rooms, how to allocate jobs, how tidy everyone needs to be!!!

3.
If you find yourself in a communal living situation it is important that you still have a private family space, something the farm didn't afford for any of us. This is actually just as important for singles as for couples and families, if you don't have private living quarters you will eventually find yourself having whispered arguments in a room somewhere because you don't want to wash your dirty linen in public. We all need our own space to walk about naked in, if we want to!

4.
Communal living is restrictive to growth and can easily give the impression there is a group who are in and a group who are out, houses will eventually reach capacity. This can lead to the impression that the communal livers are really doing community whilst the rest of us just aren't hard core enough!!!! It can also lead to other people thinking you are a weird exclusive cult, especially if you get a farm in the hills.......

5.
Everybody working together and living together can lead to a lack of delineation in your home and work life. People will talk about work when really they should just be chilling. I think if you are going to do communal living people working in different jobs would be a real help. This of course can also happen to couple who work together.

6.
Homes need to be havens, places of escape as well as places of hospitality. Think about the fact that you will want visitors and so will the other people who live in the home, this can add pressure. Living abroad makes this even more intense as visitors tend to come for a week at a time!

7.
Communal living can make more sense economically, and it will grow you in grace. Shared pots can be good, but can still lead to tension as someone will think one thing is a necessity and another person thinks its a luxury!

8.
Communal living will highlight how judgmental we are. We all have an idea that the way we do things is the best way, the way we spend money is the most sensible way. When people do it differently we can soon become judgmental.

9.
Communal living mixed with simple living can add pressure. Actually living simply is very difficult, we need to remember that the industrial revolution happened for a reason! The reason some people, Shane Clairborne included, can live simply is because some people don't live simply, they work real hard and help provide for other people and ministries to exist. Rich people invest in kingdom initiatives all around the world and without them people couldn't try to plant communities in tough places. Give the rich a break.

10.
Community living is the way to proceed, by all means try communal living, but for me community living is a necessary part of our faith that has to be accessible to all. Geographical proximity would be the best way forward for this, all live separately but in the same neighbourhood, have rhythms of prayer, times of eating and gathering.

Then at the end of the day everybody goes home to their own tent.

Read Brian's Blog at brianheasley.blogspot.com