Communitas
What Coronavirus, mission trips, and getting lost in the woods have in common.
This post is a continuation of last month’s article “Community isn’t the Goal”. Read that HERE.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on a last-minute mission trip to Haiti. A buddy that I worked at the time with told me that they needed to fill a slot on his churches vision trip and asked if I’d like to join. Since the ministry we worked for gave us a scholarship and extra time off for mission trips, I was able to jump right in with few questions asked.
One of the things that struck me about traveling to Haiti was how quickly I went from the glitz and glam of Miami to the impoverished slums of Port-au-Prince. It’s quite disorienting to get off an airplane and immediately jump into the bed of a truck and drive around a busy, loud city in which no one looks like you or speaks like you. It’s even more unsettling to witness families digging though mounds of trash for food and encountering people who may die without medications that we easily buy over the counter in the States.
Although this was a short trip, on the way back to the airport it occurred to me how short of a time I had known those I was working alongside of. I went into this trip only knowing 2 people on the 10-person team. But now, it felt like I had known them for years. I had worked with the friend who invited me for 3 years, but it was as if I had just really gotten to know him after this experience together.
If you have ever been on a mission trip, you may have had a similar experience with your team members. How does this happen?
Last month, I wrote that we don’t experience the brotherhood that God intends for us in the church because we lack a common mission. I would also contend that we don’t experience Biblical community because we lack common suffering. Suffering brings people together. Challenges that a group of people experience together forces them to rely on one another for survival.
There is no great cause worth pursuing that will not entail a level of suffering to achieve.
This is why sports teams, firefighters, police officers, and others seem to attain an uncanny tightness in their community — because they suffer together in pursuit of their mission.
We see this throughout Scripture. God forges His people in the fires of trail and suffering. He brought His people through the Exodus and Exile. Jesus and His disciples had no place to lay their head, were constantly on the go, and chastised by the religious leaders. The persecution of the church in Acts both brought believers together and propelled them to the ends of the earth.
1 Peter, a letter written to “elect exiles” amidst persecution, challenges us to
have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8–9)
In many ways, God uses persecution, suffering, and discomfort to unify his people and catalyze their impact on the world.
Author and missiologist, Alan Hirsch, describes this phenomenon as liminality and communitas.
Liminality is ‘that situation where people find themselves in an in-between, marginal state in relation to the surrounding society, a place that could involve significant danger and disorientation’. Communitas is what happens ‘in situations where individuals are driven to find each other through a common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization’. In other words, liminality leads to communitas. We see liminality-communitas in the growth early church, in the history of revivals, and in the fastest growing churches around the globe today.
The goal of “community” is the comfort, convenience, and needs of it’s group members. Communitas is a byproduct of a group of people on mission and experiencing a level of difficulty and suffering due to that mission. We want communitas, not community.
This is one of the reasons why I believe the Coronavirus will make the Western church stronger. The pandemic is forcing us in North America to a state of liminality (a state that churches in the East and Global South find themselves in daily). When we look outside of ourselves and to the needs of the most vulnerable people in our cities, it forces us to rethink how we gather, how we give, how we disciple, how we work…everything. People in the church are being pushed into smaller groups and they need one another. We’re beginning to see communitas during this transitional, disorienting, and scary season.
But how do we as small groups or micro-churches get communitas when there isn’t an external threat or pandemic facing the church? I have a few suggestions:
1. Go on Mission Trips –When you’re on a mission trip together, your team experiences a unique bond. Instead of everyone in your group going on different trips, plan one together. In fact, if you’re a member of Fielder Church, we will partially scholarship a trip that your group takes together to one of our domestic or international partners. If you send an email to cpinero@fielder.org or rmckay@fielder.org, we’d love to help you get started.
2. Incarnate with the poor — When Jesus “incarnated”, He became flesh (John 1). The Message says that He “moved into the neighborhood”. There is a big difference between giving money or donating to the poor and incarnating. Donating is a good thing but it wont lead to communitas. Spending time with people in that under-resourced apartment complex or neighborhood “across the tracks” will.
Just as Jesus left the comfort of heaven to serve us and sacrifice for us, we must leave our comfort zones to serve people where they are.
3. Fast Together — One of the best things about being on staff at Fielder Church is the annual fasting retreat. We go to a retreat center for 3 days each Spring to pray, read scripture, sing songs, and sit in silence. Everyone drinks water only until we break fast with communion and a meal together. These 3 days are one of the reasons we have such a great staff culture. It’s amazing how suffering through hunger brings people together. The goal is to meet with and hear from God, but in His grace, He allows people to bond as well. Try this with your group. Have everyone fast for a day and break fast together with a meal in the evening. Or, try your own version of a fasting retreat.
4. Get lost in the woods — I’m serious…you and your group members should go camping, go on a hike, and get lost in the woods. Turn off your cell phones for a few days. It’s amazing how just not having your phone is disorienting. The sense of adventure, discovery and relying on one another will lead your group towards communitas.
Remember, community isn’t the goal, mission is. When we’re on a mission together, things will be difficult, unpredictable, and uncomfortable, but that is the very thing the Lord uses to draw us closer to Himself and closer to one another.
