Instructions for a Healthy Community
By this point it should be evident the Book of Hebrews has played a significant role in my own emerging. The final chapter of Hebrews gives a few instructions for community. I want to end this blog by quickly exploring what those instructions are.
1. Keep on loving each other as brothers- Hebrews 13:1
The author begins with what should be obvious but is often substituted with a pale substitute. The author reminds the reader to let love be central. A healthy community is founded on love as an action and connection toward one another. People in a community minister freely to others and freely receive ministry from others. This is, like much of what I have written, is as much about learning to love one another as anything else. Practicing true community is the closest connection to intimacy with Christ we can have in this life. A healthy community needs to remain relatively small or else people become nothing more than, at best, active members.
2. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it- Hebrews 13:2
The second instruction for a healthy community is to show hospitality to strangers. And just because a healthy community isn’t trying to grow for the sake of growing, a healthy community doesn’t isolate itself. A community needs to remain open to how God wants to use it and develop it. But hospitality doesn’t always imply inviting others to be a part of the community. I always found it amusing when a church prided itself on being a friendly and welcoming church. Big deal. Of course the institution promotes being welcoming to visitors. That is the best way to grow the institution. The instruction for a healthy community isn’t to be friendly and welcoming (even though we should all continue to do those things). The instruction is to offer ministry to others. That simply means we don’t formulate our hospitality around how the visitor might benefit us, but to give ministry freely and without question. I would like to make it clear though I am not implying that when members of a church are welcoming to visitors it is wrong. I believe that, for the most part, this is the work of God in peoples’ lives that drives them to offer hospitality. I am, however, critiquing how the institution exploits the work that God is doing in peoples’ lives as a way to grow the institution.
3. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering- Hebrews 13:3
The third instruction is to support those in the community that are suffering. As with the previous instruction, there is a significant difference between how God is working in members of a church’s lives to offer ministry to others and how the church misuses this work of God for its own purposes. But also like the previous instruction, the greatest danger is how the goals and influence of the institution limit the ability of the people in the institution to offer ministry to the extent that God wants. One of the greatest reasons to get involved in a church is because the church reached out to you when you needed love and acceptance. There is no doubt that the church does this. But a community reaches out with all that it is. It is what happens when a member of a Sunday school class that has met for 20 years cares for one another or what can be seen in a small town church with a weekly attendance of 200 people. It is what happens when people share each other’s lives. The problem is, again, that institutionalism (institutionalism refers to no person but to the philosophical influence that becomes part of church leaders’ lives) promotes caring for others to the extent of meeting its own goals. Beyond that, the institution is unable to give much more.
4. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”Hebrews 13:5
The fourth instruction is personal integrity for the sake of community. Within the institution, personal integrity is only encouraged as a bylaw for membership or to maintain the integrity of the institution. Because peoples’ lives are connected only at the institutional level, personal integrity is only important when there is overlap. Within a healthy community, where peoples’ lives are intimately connected, personal integrity is the responsibility of the community. We have the freedom to call out sin, challenge dysfunctional behaviors, and praise areas of victory. For my community, despite how difficult it might be, I have given the community the right to call out anything in my life that interferes with healthy spiritual development. Of course this done with love and respect, but I understand that because God brought us together for community God desires to use anyone of them however He sees fit.
5. Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith- Hebrews 13:7
The next instruction is to support leadership and those who give ministry. I have periodically been critical of professional ministers in institutional churches. But here is where I will defend them. Professional ministry is lonely and exhausting. The greatest corruption of professional ministers is the result of a lack of trust and support of the congregation. The leaders in a healthy community are those who are practicing their gifts. Position doesn’t imply leadership, only gifts associated with leadership. Leadership might and probably should shift depending on the situation. Certain members of a community might have gifts which are more consistently sought by the group, such as counselor, and that individual may play more of a consistent role of leadership within the group, but leadership is fluid depending solely on how God moves the group.
6. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. Hebrews 13:9
What I have been writing may be considered strange teachings to some. This verse is referring to foreign and perverse forms of Christianity that were infiltrating the Christian community that were fundamentally different than Christianity while still taking the form of faith. The author instructs the community to focus on the grace of God above all else. The centrality of the message to the church is to focus on Christ.
7. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.- Hebrews 13:16
The pinnacle of the community experience for Jesus and the twelve took place after years of shared experiences, in fighting and conflict, and many evolutions. The upper room was the culmination of how Christ had worked both individually within the lives of the various twelve and how Christ worked within the shared experience of the whole. There were frameworks established through previous Rabbi followings, but as Christ reaches out to them as friends, the group became unique and distinctive. Community will likely continue to be difficult regardless of the growing awareness of the need for it. But as members of the Body seek out relationships and are open to the relationships God provides, community will emerge, community that is rooted in trust, intimacy, and a shared pilgrimage. Ironically, the key for church leaders in developing community is to wait. In a culture that values “emerging” as an act of human will, the community experienced by Jesus and His twelve emerged on its own as it was open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, free of personal and corporate expectations, and allowed the time to become what Christ desired it to become. The twelve showed up with a shared vision, mission, and purpose, but ultimately it was simply the commitment to show up that prepared them for the trials of Passion.
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