How do you build community? How do you come to feel that you belong?
We, a group of more than 40 folk with a wide range of ages, geographies, theologies (so many of us are pastors it is easier to spot who isn’t) are being formed into a community. Here’s something of the process.
1. Worship. We have been learning songs that no one know. Taize, Iona. You might have thought that that would exacerbate the feeling of not belonging but having sung these songs round and again actually the bond of mutual ignorance has changed into the bond of one voice.
2. Sharing. We have gone round in a circle and shared our name (mostly forgotten already) and a book that made a big difference to us. Lord of the Rings, Silver Chair, and Pride and Prejudice had already been taken, with a little more thought, given the American audience I should have said Huckleberry Finn but said Watership Down. The point is when we know just a little about each other we begin to see each other a human as belonging to us and as us belonging together and slowly there is less “us”, less “them”.
3. Serve. Rotas and stuff. You’re put into a team that cleans some part of this house. I’m on shower cleaning duty, daily, half an hour. Working together has a bonding effect and makes us ask small questions like Where is the loo roll stored?
4. Corporate Silence. 20 mins of sitting in the church in utter silence. This is less like a commuter train silence which I have found to be eerie and exclusive. Instead this is more like that scene in Far from the Madding Crowd when Gabriel Oak says To Bathsheba Everdene “All I want is that whenever I look up there shall you be…” Maybe that should have been my book. In the midst of my thoughts I indulge in some self-righteous grumpiness because until I hear CS Lewis reminding me to laugh at myself. I repent of my stubbornness and seek the blessing which, incidentally, led to yesterday’s blog.
5. Listening. Especially listening with no intent to speak and allowing someone to say they still suffer from the feeling of being a failure. Another facing the impossible ministry of speaking to the generation that know how to cancel people who upset them but do not know how to forgive, to build trust or community.
6. We were each invited to go for three short walks. You could do this. Each walk need not be more than 20minutes.
Firstly take with you Eph 2.2 with intent to be freed from “the sins in which you once walked”. And so let go of those strings that have become attached that hold you back from being the person God is calling you to be.
On the second walk, pray through the text “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” Ephesians 4v1.
And on the third walk, walk towards who God is calling you to be and so take the phrase from Eph 5v1 “walk in love”.
Ah that’s the aim. Walk in love.