John Eldredge on community living

I just came across this article by Eldredge in House2House, a house church resource. In reading it, I realized how the World Race, a pioneer church-planting and discipleship program, epitomizes in many ways the community for which we are all searching. Jesus and his disciples did it. Eldredge is doing it. Twenty- and thirty-somethings out in the mission field are doing it. You can, too. Find a fellowship. If it’s not costly, keep searching. Here are some of John’s thoughts:


The family is . . . like a little kingdom, and, like most other
little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling
anarchy.

Going to church with hundreds of other people to
sit and hear a sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never
expose you. That’s why most folks prefer it. Because community will. It
will reveal where you have yet to become holy, right at the very moment
you are so keenly aware of how they have yet to become holy.

It will
bring you close and you will be seen and you will be known, and therein
lies the power and therein lies the danger. Aren’t there moments when
all those little companies, in all those stories, hang by a thread?
Galadriel says to Frodo, “Your quest stands upon the edge of a knife.
Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope
remains while the Company is true.”

Seriously now-how often have you seen this sort of intimate
community work? It is rare. Because it is hard, and it is fiercely
opposed. The Enemy hates this sort of thing; he knows how powerful it
can be, for God and His Kingdom. For our hearts. It is devastating to
him. Remember divide and conquer? Most churches survive because
everyone keeps a polite distance from the others. We keep our meetings
short, our conversations superficial.

“So, Ted, how’s everything going
on the Stewardship Committee?”

“Oh, just great, Nancy. We’ve got a big
goal to reach this year, but I think we’ll be able to get that gym
after all.”

No one is really being set free, but no one is really at
odds with each other either. We have settled for safety in numbers-a
comfortable, anonymous distance. An army that keeps meeting for
briefings, but never breaks into platoons and goes to war. Living in
the community is like camping together. For a month. In the desert.
Without tents.

All your stuff is scattered out there for everyone to
see. C’mon-anybody can look captured for Christ an hour a week, from a
distance, in his Sunday best. But your life is open to those you live
in community with.

(From
Waking the Dead
, by John Eldredge –
Remember
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