if you’ve ever had a business partnership in china, you may know it’s about much more than signing a contract.  business is focused on developing strong, trusting relationships that take time.  in fact, it might take days of dinners and meetings before the actual business deal is even talked about!

a child born in uganda isn’t born just into a family, but an entire village that takes responsibility for their upbringing.  it is common to pay the school fees for your neighbor’s child, or make meals for the whole village to share.

in chiapas, mexico, the zapatista’s use the word hermanamiento to describe the “brotherhood” of not only community members but also between the community and international partners.  it is the concept that “you can call on me and i can call on you” in the time of need, no questions asked, no commodities, no rewards.  it’s not considered an act of compassion but an act of empowerment.

and in the west, we praise the individual.  we commend the basketball player who scores the most points, the pastor with the largest congregation, the host who throws the best parties, and the student with the best grades.  there’s definitely a time and place to acknowledge and admire certain accomplishments, but i think we have a lot to learn from other cultures.

we push for individualism and independence.  we praise promotions and popularity. we strive to be recognized and rewarded.  there’s no doubt God has created each person with unique gifts, talents, and traits (psalm 139:13-16), but He didn’t create us to live life alone. the power of a relationship is undeniable.

in romans 12:3-8, paul warns us not to think too highly of ourselves as individuals because we were actually made for relationships.  “…so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another (v. 5).”  when God gave each of us a “measure of faith” and a different “function,” He had this incredible picture of how the body of Christ would work.  through His grace, the actions of a group of people to further His kingdom are more effective, more compelling, and more productive than those of someone attempting to do it on their own.  God intended for us to interact, converse, play, work, eat, plan, and act TOGETHER.

what would it look like if we thought about individual talents and skills in light of a collective community?  what if we raised our children and ran our businesses by maximizing the potential of working together? or what if we lent a hand to our neighbor or coworker without expecting the favor to be returned?  i think we’d be surprised at the quality, power, and fruitfulness our everyday relationships would have if we thought of ourselves as a collective society rather than individuals.

jessie simonson is part of  31bits, an organization that empowers vulnerable individuals to rise above poverty through maximizing creative abilities and generating opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. Learn more about 31bits here.

i was thinking about possessions and how they might affect community. i’m so used to buying what I need, when I need it. i’ll run to the store before I’ll ask a neighbor. i’ll rent it before i’ll borrow it from a friend. that way I can have it when I want it.. and return it when I want it. and no one will be inconvenienced. sure, i’ll be paying extra to have my own… but in a world of convenience charges, service charges and processing fees, what’s a couple more bucks?

i made a chart. take a car for instance. everyone around here ‘needs’ a car, right?  but I thought, what am I gaining or losing by having my own vs. sharing with other people?

buy my own                                                                 share/borrow from someone else

i can use it whenever I want                                      i can only use it with someone else or when when no one else needs it

i decide the standards for how                                  i have to trust that others will respect it
clean/well maintained I want it to be                        as much as I do

if something happens to it, it’s up                             if something happens to it, it affects the other people
to me when and how to fix it                                      who depend on it

no one else depends on me and                             we depend on each other to keep the system working
i don’t depend on anyone else

i do not have to maintain a single                            i most likely maintain relationships with every person
relationship in order to use it                                    who uses it

I am responsible to pay the full amount                  we share the cost of the purchase and maintenance among everyone who uses it

a place for your thoughts on God, life, community, culture…be honest, be pure, be authentic…ready? go…

Identity impacts the way we belong to God and each other, which infuses how we join with God in His mission. For us to welcome and engage in authentic conversations and authentic relationships, we need to first be ok in our own skin.  How can we truly love our neighbor as ourselves if we don’t even know how to love ourselves to begin with?

We need to begin to know ourselves as God knows us… as accepted, adopted, named, validated, and redeemed.

I wonder if this has happened to you: You don’t feel like you fit in with a certain group, you risk a comment, or try the one-liner you thought was funny, and it’s answered with blank stares. What’s the first thought that comes to mind?

For me, that experience taps into a gut-level fear of not mattering.  My input isn’t needed.  My insights into life and observations don’t really make a difference.  I might as well not even be here.

Paul Tillich calls this the “fear of non-being”.

Remember the diving scene in What About Bob?   (if you’re saying to yourself, “What is What About Bob?” then you need to pull up Netflix right now and stick it on your queue… or just do the old fashioned way and rent it at Blockbuster).  In this scene, Siggi is trying to learn how to dive.  He’s decked out in all black totally petrified to dive off of the dock.  His dad is trying to teach him how when Siggi responds, “We’re all going to die.  You are going to die.  With all the horror in the world, what difference does it make?”

Fear of non-being.

If we are driven by a fear of non-being, then we will never offer ourselves, our true selves, in community.  We don’t dive in because we feel like it doesn’t matter. We begin to fill our heads with corrosive “self-talk,” phrases like, “They don’t care about this…  It’s not really worth the risk…  People will just reject me and I won’t matter, so I’ll just save myself the pain.”

Do you ever have those thoughts?

What are your responses to those thoughts?

Do you withdraw?  Can you name a person who actually knows that you have these thoughts?

What would it take to offer yourself anyway?

(continued from part 1)
After wrestling through all of these thoughts and feeling insanely anxious, Saturday was an overwhelming day. Each time the door bell rang, the more I felt God showing love to me through His people. My emotions were all over the place that day. I felt feelings of guilt for getting something I did not deserve. I felt extreme emotions of hopefulness and gratitude. At times I couldn’t even respond and I would just laugh at how insane this was to have people coming up to us and caring enough to pass along envelops of money. After a while some of the neighbors started coming over and giving us money. The very people who we first came into the neighborhood to “serve” were coming over to drop off envelopes to us. These were people whose legal status were in question, people who worked part time jobs, people who get stuck with adjectives like “poor” and “underprivileged”. These are individuals who are treated as if they don’t exist because they are “illegal.” These were the people, our friends, who were giving to us. If this is not the perfect expression of church, I don’t know what is.

The Kingdom of God has always been an upside down Kingdom. Jesus always said the first shall be last. Blessed are the poor, the weak, and the least. And for this season of my life, these words have never made more sense. At Solidarity we continually try to live and see the world as Jesus did. And last Saturday, every time that doorbell rang and we saw another individual standing at our doorstep with a sheepish grin and an envelope in hand, we were reminded of how Jesus called us to live. This is what Community is. There is no hierarchy. There is no class nor are people considered less than another. Community is being with people who constantly choose to die to themselves for the sake of another. That’s what God intended His church to be. This is the way Jesus asked His people to live. I had a small taste of what that tangibly looks like and for the first time I feel like I got to experience real community.

Every time the doorbell rang, somebody new was standing at our front door with an envelope of money.  My roommate Rachael hardly had a chance to sit down last Saturday because new people kept coming by to bless us.  For the past seven years I have lived and worked in a first generation Mexican neighborhood.  I help run a faith based non-profit organization called Solidarity that works in low income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods in Fullerton and Brazil.  We came to live in the Garnet neighborhood with the intent of loving our neighbors as Jesus does.  We wanted to be there for people in their hard times and allow others to see Christ’s love in tangible ways.  But things were about to reversed.  In one of our hardest times financially, our community responded and were blessed far beyond our expectations.

A few months ago we knew we were in trouble.  It was nothing new, another Non-Profit Organization in the midst of a financial mess.  There were many of us at Solidarity who have not been paid for the past five weeks, and we have been halfhearted hanging onto dependence on God.  At the end of the week our mortgage was due and we barley had half of the payment.  Throughout the week both the Nixon’s (my roommates) and I continued to believe that God would provide.

On Monday we were excited to see what God was going to do.  Tuesday came and passed, yet there were still feeling of hope.  Optimism started to become more of an ideal by the time Wednesday night came.  Our house was trying to remain trustful but nothing was happening.  We were trusting in God, but He was not showing up.  On Thursday a feeling of dread started to hit.  I wish I could say that my faith is unwavering, but the weight of the upcoming deadline was feeling heavier and heavier.  Friday was the last day to check Solidarity’s P.O. Box to see if any checks came in allowing either me or Tommy to cash one of our pay checks from a month ago.  With a renewed sense of hope, we went to the post office only to find an empty faux bronze box staring back at us.  Nothing came in.  There wasn’t a surprise check from a large donor, nor was there a donation from one of our church partners; instead, what we did receive that day was the knowledge that 1,800 dollars in taxes were due next week.  At this point, one of the staff wrote a letter asking our community for help.  The letter went out around 4pm that Friday night and we just waited.

If I were to be completely honest I could tell you that I believed that God would provide.  It wasn’t a matter of “if” the Nixon’s and I would be all right.  Maybe we’d have to move.  Maybe we would lose the house, but in the long run we’d be ok.  What I was having a hard time with was, truly believing that this process was good.  I don’t want to be dependent on God and His people.  I don’t want to have to humble myself and accept help from others.  I want to be able to provide for myself, to not have to rely on others, to be independent, self-sufficient, and make it in this world BY MYSELF.

I know it seems juvenile to not believe even through God has been more than good through out my life.  Yet, I forget.  I am like Israel whose very feet walked on the floor of the Red Sea while the water was walled off on either side of them, but completely forgets that God has their best interest in mind while they are having a tough time in the desert.  God has been working on our community to free us from the slavery of being dependent on money, but I kept on asking God what’s really wrong with finding security in money.  It’s the way everything is run in this culture and this generation.  We need money, your church runs through the system of money, why are you asking me to put my trust in you and not money?  And in response, I felt like God continually pushes back and has been saying to me, “My church does not need money to exists, my people do not need money to thrive, just abide in me.”

…

(Part 2 coming next week)

The disposable. Do you realize how much stuff we throw away? How temporary everything has become?

Nothing seems to last anymore.. clothing, home décor, even music goes out of style within a few months.  Industries are built around the disposable: plates, silverware, food containers.. I even recently saw [and found myself mildly obsessed with the thought of actually possessing] a single-use  video camera.  When I was growing up, video cameras were Christmas presents, substantial gifts. Now we can buy disposable ones at Rite Aid.

I thought of the fantastic things that could be done with a disposable video camera.. the risks I’d take.

..the risks I’d take.

Risks, meaning the way I’d handle the camera. Who cares if it breaks. It was cheap, I could buy another one. Besides that, if it doesn’t  turn out great, it was after all.. a cheap experiment.

Which is fine.

Sort of.

As long as we’re talking about our stuff.

As long as I’m not using that same kind of careless risking on my relationships. People are not disposable, but in a world of mass produced, in-one-season-out-the-next, I can start looking at friendship, relationship or even marriage through this paradigm.

People are investments. Sure, relationships have seasons and some of them lead us to go our separate ways in the end. But that’s different than throwing something in the trash. And it’s definitely different than beginning a relationship with the assumption that it was cheap to begin with.

Our cities, with stories of rejection pouring out of every door of every house, vehicle and office.. is in need of a little more permanency.

I guess sometimes commitment is the only thing that reveals the real value of something.. or someone.

I’m making an assumption as I write this: we all crave community, but often we approach it from a position of neediness, and often not with a desire to create authenticity or invest ourselves.  Here’s what I mean… have you ever experienced a friendship that continually felt like they were sucking the life from you?  Why do you think that is?  What do you think they needed from you?  Have you ever had the sense in a conversation that you were able to be completely yourself?  No one sets out to not be themselves… we end up saying something, or acting in a way that’s a bit odd, and then after the fact, we wonder why it is we did or said that.

As we approach the idea of community, whether you’re cultivating deeper connections among acquaintances, or if you’re out in the neighborhood, the hope is that you’re able to contribute your true self.  A person who is in touch with their ‘true self’ is living from a place of knowing who they are and whose they are.  Am I living as a child of God, created intentionally with the various facets of my personality?  Or am I putting on a separate show of who I want people to see?

Have you encountered a truly genuine person?  There is something magnetic about them isn’t there?

For the next weeks, I’d like to consider some aspects of community that begin with us living from a deep sense of ‘true self’.

To frame our exploration I’m going to pull some ideas from Paul Tillich, an American theologian and philosopher.  I have been impacted by the forces he has identified that oppose ‘true self’:

3 FEARS

1. Non-being
2. Not measuring up
3. Non-meaning

3 ILLUSIONS:

1. What I do defines me (or my success)
2. What I have defines me (or my possessions)
3. What others do, have, or think about me defines me (or comparison)

How would you define your ‘true self’?

Are you aware of ways that you live that aren’t consistent with your true self?

What comes to mind for you when you hear the word community?

Is it just me, or is the word “community” overused in multiple settings?  Mobile home park communities.  Community Center.  Community discount.  Community College.  If you show up at a church, you might hear someone talk about how necessary community is in our lives.  Going to the store, you might walk by someone collecting change for the needs in our community.  I find that words with the deepest reservoirs of meaning can lose their impact through overuse.

Who is your community?  Is it about a group of people?  Yes.  What community are you in?  Is it about location?  Also yes.  This word contains concepts representing sociology, psychology, anthropology, and ecology.

As I dig into the depths of a word and concept like community, I’m discovering four different aspects that seem to stand in direct contradiction to the prevalent values in our culture.  I’d like to explore four of those contrasts:

Knowing vs. Distraction

Community at its core is about knowing; knowing God, self, and others.  Before we can have meaningful connections, we need to first understand our identity as rooted in who God has made us to be.  All other meaningful relationships flow from this source.  On the other hand, our culture offers us distractions as a means of finding connection.  Think of all the events at our disposal.  Each event allows an interaction, but it’s only ever as deep as that common experience.  In other words, you and I might like the band Phoenix.  But unless there’s something beyond our common interest in the music of Phoenix, chances are that will be the limit of knowing each other.  How often do our sub-cultures offer various levels of distraction without truly allowing a sense of knowing?  If my connection to you is dependent on us liking the same distraction, then what happens when Phoenix puts out an album I don’t like anymore?  We no longer have a reason to be connected do we.  Cultivating community connection stems from a deeper knowing.

Living vs. Watching

When I take out the trash in our complex, I notice a ton of blue flickering lights in people’s apartments.  Often, that flickering catches my eye and I marvel at all of the HDTV sets sprinkled throughout our development.  Our culture seems to be more and more oriented around watching; we watch the news, our favorite movies, and our favorite reality shows.  We watch how celebrities respond to worldwide disasters, political shifts, and the latest video game crazes.  I often joke with my nephew that if you took the amount of time spent on Rock Band™ and invested that same time into actually learning an instrument, you could probably form your very own real life rock band.  What we watch has the potential of shaping our view of our world, and in the same way, what we prize in our world shapes what we end up looking for.  I think Jesus said it like this, “What you treasure and value, what you spend your time considering and thinking about, that is where you will find your heart” (my paraphrase).  By contrast, in choosing community, we have the opportunity to live ourselves into new ways of thinking.  Not just watch ourselves into new ways of seeing the world.  In other words, I can espouse a certain viewpoint, like caring for the poor.  But if you really want to know what I believe, watch how I live.  If I choose community, I have the opportunity to invite other people into the ways I live my life.  I have the opportunity to choose authenticity.  Does my life reflect the things I am valuing?  Does my life, what I treasure, reflect the issues most on my heart?  Is my heart reflecting the things that are most on God’s heart?

Participating vs. Criticizing

Scandal sells.  It seems redundant to even mention that.  Our world is built on not only watching what people are doing, but then hurling judgment and critique about why they did it, and what they did wrong.  When I’m a mere ‘watcher’ the next logical steps lead me toward criticizing.  If I have ‘skin in the game’ chances are I will have a bit more grace.  Think of life as a meal.  I am an aspiring ‘foodie’ (at least in my own mind).  I know which meals I love, and I can most likely tell you what is missing in a certain entrée or course.  I can critique a meal as my own version of Yelp.  But if you asked me to participate in creating a meal I love, well, that’s where it ends.  I can critique and critique, but ask me to participate, and the game changes.  Community offers us the invitation to step out of our watching and critiquing, and into a life of participation.  True connection in community takes participation.

Offering vs. Taking

Think through the various maxims that our culture spits out with regularity:  “There are no free lunches.” “Give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile.” “It’s a dog eat dog world.” Pretty much grab any quote Donald Trump has said and stick it in here.  It becomes obvious at an early age in the US that if you want something good in life, you need to take it.  Is this really the way we view our lives?

There’s a folk tale about a group of people who died suddenly in a catastrophe while eating a sumptuous meal.  They found themselves in the afterlife at a huge banquet table with that same meal in front of them.  Each person had forks attached to their hands. And yet all of them were groaning in agony and writhing in hunger.  The forks were too long to get the bite into their own mouths.  Someone finally realized that if they just fed each other, the meal would be theirs.   And yet nobody listened.

It’s in the context of community that we learn how to offer our best to each other.  We learn that we’re stronger by giving ourselves away than by taking what we think we need.  Back to Jesus’ words, “if you seek to save your life, and remain in constant comfort unaffected by anything, you’ll lose it.  But if you dare to lose your life for my sake, you will find actual life” (again, my paraphrase).

It’s in the context of community that we have the opportunity to discover who God has made us to be; how we relate to others and find our place in God’s family; how to live into the great epic story that God has been telling throughout history; how to practice and participate in this epic; and how to offer ourselves to each other and to God.  It’s in community that we enter into the testing ground in following Jesus.  When a group of people committed to this view of community lives in these ways, the greater ‘community’ begins to notice that something different is brewing.

What is your experience of community?
Which contrast is most reflective of your life right now?
Is there an element of community that you find you need more than others at this stage in life?
What aspect of community is most difficult for you?