The Call to Conversion: Community

awake & participating: The Call to Conversion| posted by Nate

I read this book last year after picking it up at a Half Price Books store. I paid $3.58 according to the sticker I still have on it. Some of the best money I've ever spent on a book. Jim Wallis wrote this book almost 30 years ago. He wrote from experience out of a community of Christians in Washington D.C. known as Sojourners. I want to quote from a passage for reflection. Today my wife and I worked with the youth at St. Mary's church in Irving again. We actually had a game day, took a break from teaching out of scripture on various topics and went to teach through experience...which was the subject of this passage. Experiencing community. It's tough sometimes. That's for sure. Hear these words from the community of Sojourners.

In Sojourners community, we are still learning what it means to love. God has taught us much, softening our hearts and expanding our capacity to love one another and the whole of God's creation. The process is always one of conversion. The "turning to" part of conversion has enabled God's love to deepen among us in some exciting ways. But the "turning from "part of conversion has never been easy. In the early days of our community, the conversion taking place among us was especially painful. We learned that all our models and schemes for community had to die before God's creative work among us could begin. Our plans and pride over what we could build with our own strength and resources had to be shattered before the Spirit had any room to work. And we had to learn that the necessary building materials of Christian community include two characteristics of love: forgiveness and a humble spirit. Being human, we could not avoid conflict and hurting one another. It took us a while to realize that we were utterly dependent on God's forgiveness in our corporate life. Learning to forgive one another, and to know our own need for forgiveness, were early lessons that tested the survival of the community. We also had to get over any notion of being perfect people building the perfect community, which could then take on all the big issues of the church and the world. The big issues overwhelmed us, because we forgot to tend to the simplest things, like learning to love and serve one another in our imperfection. The lesson here is a basic one: the Church will never discover what it meant to lay down its life for the world until its members begin to lay down their lives for one another. An authentic public witness requires an authentic community existence. The love, care, justice and peace we desire in the world must also be practiced among ourselves.

Comments

[s.o]

good thought. What sticks with me is the line - "An authentic public witness requires an authentic community existence."
I sat in a group today where we went around and talked about each of our own "visions" for where we see ourselves in, say, 10 years. I thought briefly about it and came away with the idea that the moves I'll make soon are with the intention to put community - true community - first. We'll let the faith notions spring out of that existing community - too many times we try and start with that "public witness" and hope that the community existence comes along later.
I'm done with that.