Community Can Be Messy

I just read a brief excerpt from a new book being offered through Intervarsity Press titled Community is Messy. It reminded me of the life and leadership experience of Moses as he led the people of Israel through the wilderness of the Sinai to the Promised Land. It also reminded me of so many of my own experiences as a church Pastor for just about 30 years, serving in two church communities. 

The author of this very interesting and insightful book writes: 

            

“Community is messy because it always involves people, and people are messy. It’s about people hauling their brokenness and baggage into your house and dumping it in your living room. What do you do at that moment? The moment you realize that the people you’ve committed your life to are messy becomes the defining moment of your leadership.” 

            

As you can tell from this brief quote, the author has in mind and in fact focuses her attention primarily on the leadership of Small Groups or House Churches. Perhaps each of our House Church leaders should pick up a copy of this book, but it also speaks about churches in general and any place where we live and share with each other in community.

            

I have often been reminded of St. Paul’s true and now famous words to the Ephesians about spiritual warfare in his Letter to the Ephesians 6:12 “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Very true, ultimately these “principalities”, “powers”, ‘rulers of the darkness,” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness” are our true enemies who influence so much of the evil in our world and even in us. But I am also reminded too often that these “spiritual” enemies we are warned about come in the form of other human beings who verbalize insults or lies against us, who act un-brotherly, who stab us in the back and hurt us deeply with their betrayal, and who wound us deeply in mind, body, and soul. I often say that the spirit of Judas is very much alive, even in the church.

            

Why can’t we just come to each other and speak in brotherly and loving fashion as our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us, even if we don’t agree with one another? So much confusion and disagreement can be cleared up if we had the Christian spirit of reconciliation and of harmony. Our daily prayer should be “Lord, don’t let me be used by the Devil or his spiritual forces, the enemies of my soul, to hurt another person. Guard me from being the cause of spiritual warfare in another.”

            

Community can be messy but it does not have to be, not if we allow Jesus Christ to reign in us, to teach us and to transform us into His image. 

             

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