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After living for 16 years in a Christian community I have come up with 10 principles for people to consider who either live in community or are thinking about it. These principles are inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together and the Lord’s Prayer.
10 Principles for living in a Christian Community
Followers of Jesus, living in community, are those that:
1-are dedicated to serving and cooperating with a holy God who is perfect in righteousness, goodness, love, truth, power and beauty.
2 – realize that they are called to be part of the kingdom of God, living for Christ the King and for each other.
3 –seek earnestly to know God’s will through His Word and put it into practice.
4 –gather around the table of fellowship and thank God for their daily bread, and all good gifts that come down from the Father of lights, knowing that if He doesn’t supply their needs, they won’t get supplied.
5- recognize they are sinners who have not loved God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, and that they have not loved their neighbor as their self and look to Him for forgiveness.
6-are quick to forgive one another and and never shame each other.
7-do not necessarily like everyone in the community, but definitely love everyone as brothers and sisters in Christ and are always available to help sacrificially when needed.
8-trust in God to surround the community with his hedge of protection and to save them from the time of trial.
9-know that the Devil is a roaring lion, seeking to devour the community with strife and dissension, gossip and denigration, but seek refuge in the great truth that they are God’s dearly loved children made in His image.
10-strive to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever by making beauty, doing good and embracing truth.
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The staff at Cristo Por Su Mundo (Christ for the World), a home for needy children here in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is part of FoundationFor His Ministry, recently began a five day study of what it means for Christians to live in community. I felt like this was an important topic for us to delve into, since we are a faith community with almost two dozen staff members and sixty children, and we had never had an in-depth study of what the Bible or Christian leaders have to say about this important topic.
A book that has heavily influenced my perspective on Christian community, is called Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I took the first devotional/teaching session to present Bonhoeffer’s ideas of what living in community is all about.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, professor and pastor when Hitler was in power. He was ultimately executed by Hitler for his anti Hitler activities. He was head of a Christian community in Germany for awhile and wrote his little book Life Together to help other Christians who lived in community or who were considering the idea.
In our first devotional study time I handed out two pages of quotes from Life Together. Here are some of my favorites:
The goal of Christian community – Meeting one another as bringers of the message of salvation.
Be thankful – Enter into common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.
Jesus Christ alone is our unity – Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.
Priorities – It is more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to his son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.
Learning – Only in fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship; both begin with the call of Christ.
Meditation – The period of personal meditation is to be devoted to the scriptures, private prayer, and intercession. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness.
Meekness – He who would learn to serve must first learn to think little of himself.
Helpfulness – We must allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly canceling our plans by sending us people with needs that we can meet.
Jill, the assistant administrator of the children’s home also spoke about living in community. She looked at community from a theological point of view. She used the book called Community 101 as her guiding light. This book talked about how community began with God, the Trinity, three in one, the first community. Then God created Adam, and God declared that it was not good that man was alone. Man was created to live in community, and God created Eve, from one of Adams ribs. Thus the first human community.
Satan hates all things that God creates as good and beautiful, and seeks to destroy them, especially community. His first attack was against community. An essential element of community between God and man, and mankind living in community, is trust. Satan attacks community by attacking trust. He convinced Eve that God could not be trusted, and thus destroyed the perfect community that man had with God, and in the process, the community Adam and Eve had. Satan continues to try and destroy Christian community, and those living in community must be ever vigilant regarding their thoughts, words and actions, lest the Evil One drive a wedge between its members.
Below are some quotes from Community 101:
Primacy of oneness – God is eternally one. When he created us in his image, he created oneness.
God’s gift of oneness – God’s supreme achievement was not the creation of solitary man, but the creation of human community.
Centrality of oneness – The quality of human communities depends on our willingness to be dependent on God.
Commitment to community – For a church to develop and maintain oneness is not a take-it-or-leave-it option. It is a priority and a mandate. We need to be constantly reminded of our true identity as a community of oneness.
God calls us to have a “personal relationship” with Him. But that is not the end all and be all of what it means to be a Christian. God brings us into right relationship with Him, so that we can be part of the “called out ones”; the church; the community of faith; the body of Christ. God created community because He loves us and wants us to be happy. I know that is true for me. Although I have gone to church most of my life, and been a member of different churches, and done church for most of 50 years, I have not experienced such joy and happiness and fulfillment since I became part of this Christian community in Mexico called Cristo Por Su Mundo. Instead of “doing” church, we are “being” the church that God called His followers to be.
Thinking on this, I am reminded of the breakfast illustration of ham and eggs. In the making of this breakfast the chicken was involved, but the pig was committed. Most Christians are involved in a Christian community, living at the fringes of what God truly intends for His disciples. I think God wants all His children to take the plunge, and commit to living in community. That is the way He wired us in order to truly glorify Him by enjoying Him.
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There are many things which a person can do alone, but being a Christian is not one of them. As the Christian life is, above all things, a state of union with Christ, and of union of his followers with one another, love of the brethren is inseparable from love of God. Resentment toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart with love to God. The personal relationship to Christ can only be realized when one has “come to himself” as a member of His Body, the Christian fellowship.
William T. Ham
To Enjoy God 