Community

Just finished a book called "The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview". It was overall a great read and good insight into looking outside of ourselves and opening up to the world with the love of Christ. Here was a comment that really stuck to me about community:

The Community is God's means of empowering people. THe Christian community...should work for justice in political life. The church should be a place where the elderly and disbled contribute meaningfully. As a multidimenshional community, it should be a place where the arts are encouraged and aestetic life flourishes.

...the christian community should foster a responsible economic lifestyle which radically breaks with the narcissistic consumerism that surrounds it.

...when married people feel pressure to give up on their marriages as conflicts arise, the Christian community should provide a supportive and healing environment, perhaps even offering profesional assistance.

What makes the christian community Christian is its worship. A radical community, it subverts the dominant culture because it worships, serves and prays to a different God. It's worship sets teh pattern for its whold life. Rather than being conformed to the world, it is a community being trasformed by the renewing of its communal mind - its world view. Consequently its worship is not relegated to just liturgical activities, but it gives its whole life to God as a Sacrificial offering (Romans 12:1-2). Herin is the essence of a Christian cultural witness in a society in decline.

Worship beyond the church walls? Helping peopel inside and outside of your congregation? A place where everybody is welcome? Sarcasm aside, this book brought up many thoughts that I thought that I would share.

peace,
ron