Stories in Community
We've just got back from New Wine, where I was serving as a Pastor to one of the children's work teams. During the week, I had a few conversations with people about stuff that is going on in their lives, did some Bible teaching and prayed for and with the team. I also got a bit of reading done.
In all this, a couple of themes kept coming up.
The first one is how important community is. We really cannot function effectively in splendid isolation. Time and again the thing that people needed was someone to work through an issue with them, and support them as they worked out the best way forward. We all need friends and mentors, and this is just as true for Christians. Jesus wandered around with a gang of mates, teaching them together and getting them to work through things together, holding each other to account and supporting each other.
The second theme is that of story. When I was chatting to people, I wanted to know something about them and where they were coming from. So I would ask them how they came to know Jesus. The stories they told me, even when fairly simple, were so powerful. Sometimes just the act of recalling and telling the story was enough to bring encouragement and hope where there had been confusion or disappointment.
The two themes came together in two very different books I read over the week.
In "Velvet Elvis", Rob Bell writes, "Our story is God's story. So many of us have been conditioned to think of our faith as solely as issue of us and God. But faith is a communal experience. A shared journey. I have heard people say that their stories and not exciting... But the point of our stories and our faith journeys is they are something much bigger."
In "Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation", Adrian Plass writes, "the place where we are as individuals is of little importance compared with the body of Christ as a whole. That person who seems to project the love of Jesus so effortlessly is a part of me, just as I am a part of them. Their smile is my smile. My low wattage glow is their low wattage glow. Do I dare to own whatever I find, good or bad, in my brothers and sisters? Do they dare to do the same?"
Story and community. Both key to living life to the full.
In all this, a couple of themes kept coming up.
The first one is how important community is. We really cannot function effectively in splendid isolation. Time and again the thing that people needed was someone to work through an issue with them, and support them as they worked out the best way forward. We all need friends and mentors, and this is just as true for Christians. Jesus wandered around with a gang of mates, teaching them together and getting them to work through things together, holding each other to account and supporting each other.
The second theme is that of story. When I was chatting to people, I wanted to know something about them and where they were coming from. So I would ask them how they came to know Jesus. The stories they told me, even when fairly simple, were so powerful. Sometimes just the act of recalling and telling the story was enough to bring encouragement and hope where there had been confusion or disappointment.
The two themes came together in two very different books I read over the week.
In "Velvet Elvis", Rob Bell writes, "Our story is God's story. So many of us have been conditioned to think of our faith as solely as issue of us and God. But faith is a communal experience. A shared journey. I have heard people say that their stories and not exciting... But the point of our stories and our faith journeys is they are something much bigger."
In "Bacon Sandwiches and Salvation", Adrian Plass writes, "the place where we are as individuals is of little importance compared with the body of Christ as a whole. That person who seems to project the love of Jesus so effortlessly is a part of me, just as I am a part of them. Their smile is my smile. My low wattage glow is their low wattage glow. Do I dare to own whatever I find, good or bad, in my brothers and sisters? Do they dare to do the same?"
Story and community. Both key to living life to the full.
posted by Carter Clan at 7:42 pm
1 Comments:
Hi, I happened upon your blog this evening after doing a search for New Wine North to see what folk were saying about it... I was on the team you pastored and I just wanted to say thank you as I popped in. It is a real chore at times to get up so early for team meetings long before the children arrive, and then again in the evenings, the afternoon having passed by in the blink of an eye, but those times of worship and word were sustaining. God bless you and your wife and family.
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