I have been pondering the subject of community. It is not something that I am personally much inclined to, but it has been growing in my attention. I like my space, and am not particularly gregarious. I tend to struggle in settings that are purely social, that lack a definite goal. I tend to want to "get it done" and then move on. I’m a bit too functional, too task oriented to be of much use in community. But my complacency is being challenged.

First of all, I am increasingly aware that the West’s obsession with individualism is horribly unbalanced. I now see that the Bible understands faith only in the context of community. Look at how many times entire groups are associated with the actions of a particular person. A Hebrew king follows God; the whole nation does. He does evil in the sight of the Lord; everybody cops it. Paul persuades some Greek male to become Christian; his whole household converts with him—wife, children, slaves.

There is a tendency these days to downplay the role of institutional religion. People have been heard to say that they don’t need church to have a good relationship with God. After all, it is a personal relationship we have with him, is it not?

But this phrase "a personal relationship" with Jesus is never mentioned in the Bible.

Not that the idea of personal relationship is at odds with the Bible; it is implied but never stressed. There is a balance between the personal and the communal aspect of Christianity, which the West is in danger of losing altogether. We need both. I can separate verbs and nouns in the abstract; when writing or speaking I cannot do without either. Similarly, we need both individual commitment and community to be whole Christians.

I see areas in which we have done ourselves great damage due to our misplaced emphasis on the individual. First of all, our modernist attention on information as the key to Seventh-day Adventism, our stress upon getting theology right, has come at the expense of relationship. In the end, all theology is merely a theoretical explanation of Christianity in practice. And as the Bible repeatedly makes clear, we cannot claim to know Christ if we ignore our fellows. Information cannot save; relationship can.

I see individualism behind the process that has turned serving the church community into filling offices in the church. The emphasis is on getting a job done, instead of on serving the body of Christ. This may be hairsplitting; the actual work done may be the same. But it is a question of approach, of understanding, and unless we articulate what we mean, we can lose sight of the fact that we are not "doing a job" or "filling a church office," we are in fact serving the Lord and his people.

The transmission of faith to the next generation is breaking down through the failure of community. It isn’t a lack of information that drives young people to substance abuse, sexual experimentation, and desertion of the church, but rather a lack of community with their elders.

Recently, I have been involved in a men’s group that has taken up the challenge of "initiating" the young men of its community into the world of the Christian man. Having agonized over my own children and their development, I stand back amazed at the power of a few godly men to take my young man and turn him around in attitude and behavior. And virtually none of it had to do with information. It had to do with a group of men who said to my son, "You belong in our community. Here is how a Christian man in this community behaves." Powerful stuff.

A similar area of danger I have seen is in the development of spiritual "stars" who trip from place to place, but lack a community. I have seen a number of leading lights do the public speaking circuit, retaining their brilliant rhetoric and their entertaining skills, but gradually losing that spiritual edge that gained them recognition in the first place.

As a minor player on the public speaking circuit myself, I have been tempted with the dangers. Cut off from a close community to which I can be accountable, I start believing the adulation that comes from being a successful public speaker. How much I need my own church community, and the two small groups to which I belong, to keep me accountable, to take a large pin to my inflated ego, and keep me grounded in the basic realities of Christian life.

Which brings me to my last point. As a scribe for this illustrious e-journal, I write my piece, and often pour part of my soul into it. The piece gets posted, usually with some positive word from the editor back to me. And that’s it.

Who am I writing to? Does anyone read it? What do they think? Does anyone want to respond? Oh how I need that. I need to be part of a dialogue of faith. But for now it feels more like a monologue.

The beauty of electronic communication is that I can sit alone in my office and write to thousands (?) of people I would otherwise never meet. And yet …, and yet, I am still alone. The magic of the Internet conceals the fact that my communication lacks community. Somebody, please, argue with me, fight me, affirm me. My soul needs it.

No wonder the itinerant preacher Jesus took a community of twelve men with him. He wasn’t just helping them; they were helping him. If Jesus needed community to be effective, how much more do I need it?

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