Rethinking Community - Part 1

Quick. Think of three people from Cross Community Church (other than your family members and the pastors). Now imagine you’re out for a leisurely walk around town and you run into one of the three people you just thought of. If someone (a stranger) saw the two of you together and asked, “How do you know each other?” – what would you say? How would you respond?

My guess is that most of us would answer something along the lines of, “We go to church together.”

It seems to me that most, if not all, human relationships are varied and complex. It’s rare when a single association defines an entire relationship; our co-workers are also our friends, our siblings can be business partners, etc. But even in complex relationships, there’s usually one primary association that largely defines and shapes that relationship – and that association/relationship is the one we usually identify when we introduce people to someone else for the first time. Yes, Esther is my friend, but I still introduce her as my wife.

Every personal relationship has some measure of obligations and expectations and these expectations and obligations vary depending on the relationship. We have expectations/obligations of our co-workers and they are different from the expectations/obligations we have of our parents.

So here’s my question to all of us at Cross: If many (some? most?) of us define our primary relationship with one another as “going to the same church” –what kind of expectations and obligations do we have of one another? Can authentic community be built upon a foundation of “mutual church attendance?”

What do you think?