The marks of a Christian Community

I wrote this over a year ago but, for some reason, never published it. I’ve just found it in my drafts and thought I would share it now.

I’ve had a brilliant summer with my (The Order of the) Black Sheep family spending time with them at a wedding, providing the welfare provision at Bloodstock and going to Greenbelt together this last weekend.  I feel so amazingly blessed to be part of that community and spending this time with them over the summer has lead me to thinking about what community is and ways in which it may be possible to identify when a real community has been formed. The first mark I’ve noticed is people self-identifying themselves as being part of the community. A sign of this may be people saying “I am a…”* depending on whether the name of the community lends itself to this. Community affects our identity as we start to think of the whole rather than just ourselves and so we identify ourselves as being part of the whole. Secondly people aren’t required to attend x, y or z to be considered (and to be able to feel) that they are part of the community. They may only occasionally, or never, make it to your main worship gathering but are able to feel that they are and are treated as a fully included member of the community in whatever they do to engage with it, be that social gatherings, events etc. Thirdly there is no confessional condition to membership. The group may have a confessional statement such as a creed or a statement of belief that guides it as an organisation and many members may subscribe to this but this isn’t used to exclude people who don’t subscribe to it. The community meets people where they are, rather than expecting them to fast track to where the community is. There may be members who never subscribe to the confessional statement. I think that these are good signs that a true community is forming.

The Universal Language of Hospitality

I had actually planned to Blog something else today, however I thought I’d talk about this instead and reschedule the other one for another day.

For those who don’t know me personally my mum is in hospital, and during the time that she has been there we’ve met different people who have come onto and left the ward, people who she’s made friends with and exchanged contact numbers etc. I visited last night and in the bed next to her is now a Polish lady. She only knows a few words of English, however there has been a certain amount of relationship building between her and my mum. The Polish lady will offer mum sweets, chocolate etc by handing over the tub that they are in and apparently if mum tries to turn her down they are pushed towards her slightly more forcibly, to encourage her to accept. Last night we were offered a sweet in this fashion. She is obviously a very giving lady. Mum has managed to ask a relative for a few Polish words to show that she too is making an effort and the Polish lady will indicate to mum that she’d like to know the word for what is in the her sandwich etc so mum is able to tell her the word for prawn, for instance. There is a mutual hospitality going on between the two ladies who are unable to properly communicate through language.

If hospitality can break down barriers in language in this way then it surely is able to break down barriers in culture. This is why hospitality is one of the key things talked about in Fresh Expressions, but it is not just key to Fresh Expressions, surely it is key to the Christian life. The monastics understand this with their practice of radical hospitality. So it is key for  this reason as well as kindness and offering something of the self to others being central to the Christian life.

We all have our culture, which in many ways is a language as it affects how things are understood, it is visual, for instance in the way we look, and it affects our interpretation of things that are said. And whilst it is important that we look at ways to be like Paul and become like those we are dealing with as I spoke about in a previous post we are not going to completely rid ourselves of our culture. But through hospitality we can break down the barriers left by our culture as we interact with those around us and we will build relationships. But we should’t be paternal with this, we need to accept what is offered as well as giving what we are offering, because at that point we start to build authentic and equal relationship which are not about what we can do for those we are called to but about a mutual relationship through giving and receiving in the universal language of radical hospitality.