Community IS the Mission.

The more I read about the life of Jesus and the lives of his followers after Jesus ascended into heaven, the more I begin to wonder if the mission we are called to is that of fostering community.

If you start in the gospels and read the works and teachings of Jesus, you begin to see this clear focus and theme of kingdom. A society shaped by the love, peace, and justice of God. A place where people are known and loved, where relationships grow deep, (even though they are messy) and where everyone regardless of racial, social, or economic background experiences God together.

If you then look at the book of Acts, which immediately follows the gospels, the very first event we see is the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, a day when many were gathered and saw the the Spirit descend firsthand. What happened as a result of this day was transformation in the lives of the apostles and many others, and we see the Church, the kingdom community Jesus dreamed, begin to manifest itself.

What this says to me is that where the Spirit is, community will be. And where community is, people's lives will be transformed.

So if our mission to the world should be loving others so that they may experienced a transformed life and a relationship with Jesus, wouldn't it seem that genuine community would be the best way to achieve this goal?

The reality is that 18-35 year olds in todays American culture are defined by a sense of individualism. Either because we have had bad experiences in the context of community, or because we have simply never seen genuine community and lives lived for others modeled. Everything we see on TV drives us towards individualism and being the best we can be, all on our own.

I don't think the vision of Jesus was merely personal spirituality or for us to look out for ourselves. Many of the people I have met along my journey living as a missionary live in the same reality of individualism, and it has affected them in the worse possible way.

Instead of growing up in environments where they have a loving community and support network of people all looking out for each other, many of my brothers and sisters on the streets of Canton are utterly and completely alone.

So if I as an individual am going out by myself to fix their problems, aren't I only reinforcing what they've known their whole lives? How am I doing anything different than any government agency out there giving charity? 

So the conclusion I have drawn is that mission has to be done in the context of community, and community IS the mission as well. 

I want to see lives transformed by the power of Christ. I want to see the hopeless find hope, the fatherless find security, the broken and nullified and rejected people of this world take their place as sons and daughters of the King. 

To do that we must be constantly walking the the Holy Spirit, and then genuine places of community will be created, and when we invite those we are on mission to into a genuine community and support network of love, maybe then they will see something different than what they are used to. Maybe then they will know the love of God and his transformative power.