Sunday 10th December - Creating Communitas

Putting the As into Community

I started by reading an Article from Saturday’s times that was entitled “Evil-minded parishioners making life hell for clergy”. The content of the article can be found at timesonline links to this and the accompanying picture can be found through the uploaded documents.

I need to stress that this was not because I feel this from ENC in any way(indeed I can honestly say that St Bs was very free of the sort of neurotic behaviour described in the article – although the clergy did occasionally suffer from “irritable clergy syndrome” (myself included.)) Rather the article beautifully contrasted with yesterday’s reading from the lectionary (available for puchase from Cornerstone).

Philippians 1v3-11
I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
7It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. 8God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

These verses speak of Paul’s great love for the Philippian church and as I read them, they completely challenged me about whether I can honestly say as Paul did “that I have ENC in my heart and long for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Yet this is something that as your pastor I aspire to, and I want to be part of a church where I hold the people in high regard and with a great depth of love. I really don’t want ENC to be about meetings and buildings.

The first question I have is do we want to be part of this sort of community?

This all ties in with the latest book I’ve been reading called Exiles by Michael Frost. I hope that it doesn’t feel that I’m flitting from one idea/book to the next, as I’ve read the Irresistible Revolution, Velvet Elvis and Exiles, I’ve discovered they actually compliment each other and indeed quote from each other.

In Exiles I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Communitas. Frost quotes an anthropologist called Turner who coined the phrase “communitas” when studying male initiation rites among the Ndembu Tribe in Zambia. As part of their initiation rite they went through a time of separation from the main tribe, followed by a period of liminality, living as a group of young men at the edge of society and then reintegration when they return to the tribe as men. The key stage for Frost is the time of liminality - a stage in which the initiates lived for an extended period in a spatial, social and spiritual threshold.

Anyone who saw Bruce Parry’s series the tribe will have seen him in one of these liminal groups when he spent time with the Ibex warriors of the Nyangatom tribe in the Omo valley in Southwest Ethiopia.

Turner believed that young tribesmen, while in this liminal stage discovered a depth of community so great that it transcended what we normally mean by that term.
Turner’s concept of communitas denotes an intense feeling of social togetherness and belonging, often in connection with religious rituals, in which people stand together “outside” society, and society is strengthened by this.

What relevance does this have to us, well in my striving for us to be a community I think actually what I’ve been longing for is Communitas. I look at the many western young men and women our age (wry smile from Dan – OK your age..) who have become completely disenchanted with the institutional church as described in the Times article and yet who want their lives to have meaning and purpose, who want to bring change to society and who want to engage with God. I see Communitas among Jesus and his disciples and then again in the early church. They had separated themselves from mainstream society at great personal cost, and yet the bond was phenomenal, community with a greater purpose, people with a desire to work together for a greater goal.

Question – Have you ever experienced communitas?

Frost writes “Have you ever been on a short-term mission trip overseas and felt such a special, intimate, profound sense of connection with your fellow travellers? When building houses in Mexico or working in orphanages in Haiti, we connect with other Christians at a level entirely different from the one experienced each week in our local church. This isn’t just because of the exotic location or the spicy food. It’s because we are in a liminal state. We are not living at home, nor are we really living in Mexico. We are in transition, a resident in neither place, really. This sense of liminality, fuelled by the challenge of completing certain set tasks, fosters communitas. Even if we find ourselves on team with people we don’t particularly like or whose company we don’t much enjoy, the experience of liminality eventually sweeps away our petty differences, bonding us strongly, because we are forced to rely on each other simply for survival.”

Question- Can we create Communitas without going away from home on short term mission?

I think the answer is yes, I believe ENC can create communitas, I believe we’re in that process, however to do it we need to keep asking ourselves questions.

Question – What is our purpose?

I believe that a key purpose of ENC is to create a missional community. In other words to be a church, that plants churches. To do that we need to continue to engage in society and have that sense of daily being sent in to the world. I want to ruin you for church so that you can never go back to the way that you’ve experienced church before because I believe we’re called to do something very different. Our Sunday and Wednesday meetings should be the tip of the iceberg not the be all and end all of being part of ENC.

This leads to the next question:-

Question: How is our passion for God and the lost?

This is an area where we will continually need to challenge and encourage each other, otherwise we will become a cosy club that will be very nice for a time but will leave us bored and dissatisfied.

I’m asking the church to join me in a focused time of fasting and praying in January and Lent. It’s up to individuals to decide how much they want to participate, but I would encourage you to think about taking part in January or Lent or both. Why both? Well last year I found it really significant at the start of the year as we considered the future. It feels like we have started really well with a solid foundation of friendship and commitment, however I believe we can go deeper and that we need to be reinvigorated with a passion for God that will encourage us in our outward mission.

This year during January I hope to meet with everyone to talk about how the church is going and the part they feel they’re playing. I hope to spend time looking at our values and writing down a little more about our purpose, so that as new people join us we’re clearer about what it is that we’re trying to do.

In lent we’re going away for our weekend away, however before that Mal Caladine is joining us on the first Sunday of Lent to bring encouragement and challenge. We will use the weekend away to process some of the things that Mal says, to thank God for the past year and plan for the next. (As well as eat good food, laugh a lot, swim in the heated pool and have a celebration fast breaking weekend.)

This leads onto my next question

Question – What are our priorities?

The last thing I want to do is create a church where we spend so much time doing church stuff that we have no time for life and friendships. At the same time we do need to work out what are our mission priorities and what events need numbers to make them work. I’ve used the illustration of being on a rowing boat rather than a cruise ship. At Enc we need everyone to pick up their oar and row this boat, we are at this stage when it’s very noticeable when just a few people are absent. In all of this I hope that you will feel that you are growing your community.

Frost says of Communitas, “In communitas the desertion of a partner is devastating. It’s like a member of a football team just giving up halfway through the final game. Communitas isn’t a warm, relaxing space where you come and go as you please. Communitas requires commitment, integrity, hard work, and courage. In short, communitas is about love.”

This brings us right back to the start and the reading for today.

9And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, 11filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

At the heart of Paul’s relationship with the church at Philippi was a great love that allowed the commitment to make Communitas work. Where does Paul’s love come from well the earlier verses say:-

I thank my God every time I remember you. 4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

The good work that started as an individual thing in people’s lives and was being carried on to completion, became a communitas thing through this “partnership in the gospel.”

Two things that means for us:-

First as partners in the gospel seeking to build a missional community in North London let’s bless each other. In Frost’s community in Australia one of their priorities is to Bless. “We will bless at least one other member of our community every day. This will take different forms. We might simply send an email expressing our affirmation. We might write a letter, deliver a gift, say a word of encouragement. It might sound difficult, but you’d be surprised how easy it is once you’ve got into the hang of it. And it’s marvelous to be in a community of such support and consideration.”

I think it would be amazing in our selfish north London society if we could begin to think about this sort of thing. Let’s not wait for the home group leaders to phone someone if they’re not around on a Wednesday night let’s do it ourselves. Let’s make sure we thank each other for the things we do for each other, has anyone thanked Mark ever, for leading our worship, are we grateful or do we need to get rid of him? (Only joking..)

Let’s also remember we’re different people and blessing each other is also about considering our differences, for example if we tell Dan a time he will be there at that time so let’s be considerate to him and not leave him hanging around.

Question – how can you bless another member of the community (other than a family member) this week?

Finally I was very challenged this week when I met a friend who is a management consultant and laid out to him all the possible areas that I could get involved in from coffee businesses, to chaplaincy, to TT and said “tell me what I should do?” He looked at me paused and said “Invest in your team.” I see every member of ENC as part of the team so my final question is

How can I invest in you?

So that together we can discover what it means to be partners in the gospel and bring the transforming power of the kingdom to North London.

ENC rocks, and I’m really enjoying going on this journey with you and I hope that you’re enjoying it as well. It’s not going to be easy but I do believe it’s going to be worth it.

Simon Kirby, 11/12/2006