An Organic Faith Community

A faith community is often an important part of creating and maintaining a healthy support system. Why? I am glad you asked. The way I see it, by the time I make it to the weekend, I feel bruised and battered by the world (sometimes excited and honored, but not as often), and I want some down-time to release the build up of stress. Just one of the many reasons I enjoy the Sabbath, however, not my main focus today.  By attending church, I am taking the opportunity to release the relational/emotional poisons that build up in my attitudes and actions, and instead am actively seeking the antidote. This does assume that the church body you attend is able to filter out the following poisons:

• Out loud shaming – What’s wrong with you?

• Focus on performance – love and acceptance is earned by doing or not doing certain things

• Manipulation – What people think of us is more important than what is

• Idolatry – An impossible to please “god” who is obsessed over people’s behaviors from distance.

• Having to deny thoughts, opinions or feelings different from those in authority.

• Unbalanced interrelatedness – either under (neglect) or over (enmeshment) involvement in the lives of others. Everyone is responsible for everyone else, while ironically no one is responsible for himself or herself.;David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderon The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse

A focus on performance drives weekday activities. Are duties being completed at work? Are clients satisfied? Are children completing homework and getting good grades?  Is the house clean? Lawn mowed? If certain tasks aren't done it can affect employment, grades and one's own reputation involving the ability to care for home and family. It is often very discouraging to attend a church where the focus is on performance. Some people are able to thrive on it, for a while, but most individuals just wilt under the pressure of having to perform, when instead they need to be renewed for the fight ahead the next week. To show you how evident the expectations of performance are even in a church,  research shows, "new families are welcomed (into a church) according to two basic traits:  Is the couple good-looking? And is the couple outgoing? Failing these, a family too often is left to its own devices to connect with the congregation." (Bill Ehlig and Ruby K. Payne, Ph.D What Every Church Member should Know About Poverty). A faith community, a body of believers, plays an enormous role in a individual and family's future...every weekend hope is offered, that this isn't what life will always be like, that there is a future that is better than this drudgery. What happens when instead of hope, a church experience offers more drudgery, more performance, more of the same? Life becomes about making the right people happy so that they just leave me alone. No hope, few dreams, and profound discouragement. A healthy functioning church body, operates much like the plants and trees around me that take the co2 that I breathe out, a poison to me, and instead releases o2 into the air, an elixir of life. A healthy church body is able to absorb my attempts at making worship about performance, and release grace into my surroundings. The only antidote to obsessions of performance and perfection, is recognizing that I can never earn my own salvation, it is freely given to me by my Savior.

Here is my vision of the role a faith community in a person's life:
I have to perform during the week to meet other people's expectations (Supervisor, Teacher, Neighbors, Family, Friends). This fills me up with stress because I know that I can't perform perfectly all the time. On the weekend, Sabbath (Saturday) or Sunday, I attend a worship service. I bring all of the ugly attitudes, thoughts and actions with me that have bombarded me all week in an attempt to perfectly perform my roles. From the moment I am greeted, with kindness and warmth,  when I arrive to church, I have already begun to exchange my ugly thoughts and attitudes for hope, forgiveness and Grace.Some weeks I may have more ugly thoughts, attitudes, and actions that others. As I grow in Grace, each week there might be fewer ugly thoughts, and a deeper appreciation of the Grace I have been shown, and then I might be able to carry a little bit of that Grace back to my family, my neighbors, my community, and any other part of my support system. This vision recognizes then that a worship experience is based upon the mental, physical, emotional,  relational, spiritual health of the other members of the faith community, and each week my spiritual experience will likely be different. A grace oriented faith community, will focus on showing each other grace, filling each other up with hugs, encouraging words, acts of service, quality time together, and caring gifts (Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages).

This shows how tentative an organic faith community experience can be. Being in an organic faith community means it reflects back the spiritual health of the people attending. Individuals focused on performance, will reduce a worship service to a drudgery, just one more thing to get through. However, individuals focused on Grace, on the One, on our Savior, will fill each other with up love, support each other through the storms, and celebrate the victories, and will draw men, women and children to Him.