Community

Tim Chester came and spoke at college about The Crowded House, his church planting organisation. He was winsome and engaging and I loved most of what he had to say. But he pretty much said that it's impossible to have real community unless you are frequently meeting your brothers and sisters and sharing your everyday lives with each other. It is only within this intense expression of community that evangelism, discipleship, accountability and openness will properly occur, or perhaps even occur at all.

I like the motivation behind his model and I even like the model itself. But I'm not convinced that we all need to change our church structures. I feel like community is still valid even if it is less frequent/intense. I even think that there are peculiarly good things about doing it the traditional way. There's working within an imperfect structure and making it beautiful. And there's the joy of singing and talking with people you don't know so well, just because you are brothers and sisters in Christ.

I don't know if my reasons are clear. It was hard to pin them down. Please ask if they aren't - or argue with them if you disagree.