Christians are formed in Community-Intro
God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us. Thomas Keating
Gregg’s Reflection
Before I share my thoughts on Community, I wanted to share this:
Invitation to Fellow Travelers:
Over the past years, I’ve been walking what I call God’s Faint Path—a quiet trail of spiritual seeking shaped by wilderness, silence, scripture, and the voices of saints and mystics across the ages. I’ve shared reflections along the way, not as a teacher with answers, but as a fellow pilgrim wondering aloud.
But here’s what I know: the faint path can be a lonely road.
James Finley once wrote of Thomas Merton, his beloved friend and spiritual guide as “an elder brother on the lonely road to God.” I’ve often felt the ache and gift of that truth. And like many of you, I’ve longed for the company of kindred souls—those who hunger not for religious performance, but for depth, transformation, and union with the Living God.
So I’m extending an invitation:
Would you like to journey together in a small circle of fellow travelers?
I’m imagining something simple:
• A space for shared reflections and spiritual conversation
• Periodic Zoom gatherings rooted in presence, silence, and honest sharing
• Occasional audio meditations or contemplative teachings
• An online hub for encouragement and soul friendship
This would not be about promoting a brand or building a following. It would be about mutual presence—walking side-by-side as we each listen for the Spirit’s voice in our own lives.
If something in your soul says yes, I’d love to hear from you. We’ll let it grow slowly, organically, and only with those who feel drawn.
You can reply here or reach out and see what wants to happen. I plan to begin by inviting those interested to join a Zoom which I have tentatively scheduled for June 24th. Details to follow.
With gratitude and quiet hope,
Gregg
Community
I have many friends who are ‘spiritual, but not religious.’ I have other friends who claim Christ, but are not part of a Christian fellowship. Many people love Jesus but have a problem with the church. Gandhi said: “I like your Christ, I don’t like your Christians. They are so unlike unlike your Christ.” Sadly, I have found much truth in his statement. For years I pursued a spiritual journey without being part of a community. Indeed, I could not see Christ for the Christians.
In Vernon Luckey, a Lutheran pastor, I found someone who knew the Christ I had heard of and read about in the Bible. He drew me to Christ, baptized me, and welcomed me into a local expression of the body of Christ. Apostles Lutheran, the church we joined, was far from perfect. I drew solace from a teaching I heard while driving around my sales territory. The pastor proclaimed, “If you ever find a perfect church, don’t join it, because you’ll ruin it.”
My life in Christian community began in 1980. The experience has been exhilarating and painful, with times of great stress and times of great joy. My children gained an moral and spiritual framework through our involvement in the church. Yet, they and their families are not involved in a Christian community today.
I know many people who have turned away from the church after painful experiences. Many more never darken the door of church because of the hypocrisy and judgmental attitudes they see in Christians. Yet, despite it all, with all the brokenness and sin I’ve found in church, I still remain convinced that the local Christian church is the primary means of forming Christ-followers and setting them on a pathway to spiritual maturity. The fundamental question is how can we love the God we cannot see, if we struggle to love the people around us we can see. We see it stated this way in Scripture: 1 John 4:20: For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.
I am reminded of how a sculptor chips away at a block of stone until the figure she envisions is released from the stone. The beauty emerges as the rough edges are chipped away. I look back at the person I was when I was baptized at age 28, and realize that I have been a work in process for ever since.
Think about the sharply angled boulders that are dislodged and fall into a river. Slowly, over a long period of time the current pushes the boulder downstream. As it encounters other rocks caught in the current, they rub up against each other and chip away the sharp edges. By the time the rocks reach the mouth of the river, they have been smoothed into nearly round river rocks.
From my own experience, the process of chipping away the sharp edges is inherently painful, and will only be undertaken in the service of a larger goal. As we choose Christ in our lives, we then make other choices to shape and mold our lives into the image of Christ.
Think of the river’s current as the force of God’s grace flowing around us, propelling us further into the depth of God’s love. These two forces, the current of God’s grace, and the other believers in the stream, interact together to smooth us out as the river smooths the river rock. It is in learning to get along with others who share faith in Christ, but have little else in common that helps us mature as believers.
Genie and I were first part of adult Sunday classes in which we formed deep friendships and walked together through the good times and bad with a small group of other young parents. We learned together, went camping together, met in each others homes for meals. This life on life journey allowed us to be inspired by the lives we saw, and perhaps inspire others. We were invited to spiritual retreats that proved invaluable in launching my spiritual journey. I met men who had years of experience and wisdom in the ways of Christ. To this day, I stay in touch with some of these men who were so important to my formation as a man and a leader.
One of my church friends invited me to join him for a weekend Christian Businessmen’s Retreat in 1982, and I only missed going three years in the next three decades. We walked together for thirty years, caring for and challenging each other.
Our children were baptized and confirmed in our local church. My son met his wife-to-be on a church ski trip with another local congregation. Our continuing involvement in small groups of couples meeting in homes for fellowship, learning and service brought a resolve to live the Christian life, and pragmatic examples that inspired us in how to do so.
Living life in Christian community encourages us to learn to appreciate diverse gifts and talents, to deal with conflict when it arises, and to grow in maturity. Sometimes we share a vision of the future, but argue about tactics to get there. Sometimes there is a conflict of vision. Sometimes there is just a conflict of personality. Learning to love each other even when we don’t like each other at the moment is a mark of growing maturity.
This picture wonderfully illustrates the effect. Without community, some never come down off Mt Stupid. You see multiple business failures, multiple divorces, inability to admit mistakes, to seek forgiveness. I pity those folks.
In the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, I find a strong affirmation of the ongoing role of the local church community to the formation of faith. In the introduction to the Pauline letters is an essay called The People of God in Community. In it, the authors make a strong case that the path to maturity in the life of a Christ-follower unfolds in community.
In the Letters of the New Testament, we find the continuing incarnation of Jesus Christ in “gathered communities.” These communities of faith-the Body of Christ in the world-literally become a new organism, in which people become part of one another, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, help one another begin, nurture and sustain their relationship with God. They help new disciples discover and cultivate their own spiritual gifts while teaching them to celebrate the gifts of others. Sustaining a life with God without an active, living connection to a visible expression of the Body of Christ is virtually impossible and is not a goal to be sought after.
The community of faith has been established to bring us into living communion with God and abiding fellowship with one another. We seek God and find him most often through the ministry of a local church. Here we experience, in real and concrete ways, the love of Christ and learn how we are to love one another despite disagreements and imperfections. This love, witnessed by those outside the community, draws the world to God.
Don’t get me wrong, I have encountered significant conflict, pain and betrayal in my church community. The sinfulness of a broken people does not end just because God forgives us and we forgive each other. As Richard Foster says in the Renovare Bible,
We are challenged to be living sacrifices. The only problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.
Often, we continue to lust after our idols, not being truly challenged into discipleship. However, without the experience of living in the community of a body of Christ, I would never had the strength, courage and persistence to keep seeking and trying to follow God’s faint path. Blessings
Find the rest of the post here.
Journaling Prompts
Where do you find community that shapes you? Where can you be ‘seen’ and known for who you are? Who are the people who challenge your ‘sharp edges’? What does discipleship look like in your life to draw you deeper?
Scripture
The quality of our relationship with God will be no better than the quality of our relationships with others.
Renovare Bible Notes on Malachi 2:14-15
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
Matthew 19:20
Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35
For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Romans 12:4-5
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10:24-25
Ancient Writings
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African Proverb
If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.”
Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings
The measure of love is to love without measure.
Francis de Sales
Modern Writings
Young adults in today’s era of technologically mediated socializing are lacking real-life human contact and love—without which no one can truly flourish. This exception created by greater human connection is the starting point for how we might address this pandemic of young people’s unhappiness.
Arthur C. Brooks, WHY ARE YOUNG PEOPLE EVERYWHERE SO UNHAPPY?
To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. The welfare of each is bound up in the welfare of all.
Helen Keller
Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other’s faults and failures.
Mother Teresa
God will bring people and events into our lives, and whatever we may think about them, they are designed for the evolution of His life in us.
Thomas Keating
Suppose somebody showed us a way whereby we would truly love one another, and be at peace, be at love. Can you think of anything more practical than that? But, instead, you have people thinking that big business is more practical, that politics is more practical, that science is more practical. What’s the earthly use of putting a man on the moon when we cannot live on the earth?
Anthony de Mello, Awareness
In true community we are windows constantly offering each other new views on the mystery of God’s presence in our lives. Thus the discipline of community is a true discipline of prayer. It makes us alert to the presence of the Spirit who cries out “Abba,” Father, among us and thus prays from the center of our common life. Community thus is obedience practiced together. The question is not simply “Where does God lead me as an individual person who tried to do his will?” More basic and more significant is the question “Where does God lead us as a people?”
Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 5/23/21
Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
We’re in a spiritual crisis, and the key to building a true belonging practice is maintaining our belief in inextricable human connection. That connection is the spirit that flows between us and every other human in the world is not something that can be broken; however, our belief in the connection is constantly tested and repeatedly severed.
Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness, CAC Morning Devotion, 5/24/21