Pursuing Jesus-centered community

If you haven’t yet read the most recent PCF newsletter, I encourage you to click on the download link in the ‘News and Announcements’ section on our homepage and read it. It is, as usual, excellent. Thank you, Jim Knittel.

Here is my article in the most recent edition of the newsletter:

One of our four core PCF values is ‘community.’ This value is also a key part of our mission as a church: we exist to be ‘a Jesus-centered community in Pepperell.’ The ministry leaders at PCF recently had the great privilege of spending a training evening with Tim Chester, a church planter, author, and speaker from northern England. In Tim’s book Total Church, he focuses on two key principles for doing church: gospel and community. He says: ‘Christians are called to a dual fidelity: fidelity to the core content of the gospel and fidelity to the primary context of a believing community’ (page 16).

One of the helpful things Tim said when he was with us was that, in encouraging Christians to make community more central, he is not necessarily asking them to add another thing to their schedules. Instead, he introduced the concept of ‘layering.’ There are many things we do by ourselves (such as shopping, eating meals, watching television) that we could instead do in community. Being more invested in Christian community could look like asking another Christian to go food shopping with you once a week, or having someone over for a casual meal, or having someone over to watch your favorite television show. Building community with Christians and being on mission to non-Christians is not an ‘event’ – it is ‘ordinary life with gospel intentionality.’ In the shopping, the meal, the commercial breaks, let your commitment to Jesus inform your conversation and your interaction. That is Christian community.

The kind of everyday, in-your-life Christian community Tim was describing and advocating for us is not something that many people experience in our fast-paced, individualistic, highly private American society. I have noticed that many of the houses around Pepperell are set off by themselves and have attached garages. That means when you get home from work, tired and worn out, it is easy to pull into the garage, shut the garage door behind you, walk directly into your house, and cocoon yourself with your family. That’s what people around here are used to, but Christian community promises so much more and as it increasingly happens at PCF I think it will be incredibly attractive to those around us who long for it even though they may not think they want it.

I recently read a short story that expresses simply and eloquently the value of community. It is called ‘A Jonquil for Mary Penn,’ and is in a collection called That Distant Land, by Wendell Berry. A young girl named Mary marries Elton Penn, a young, struggling farmer and they are rejected by Mary’s parents, who consider Elton an inadequate match for Mary. Elton and Mary rent a farm in a neighborhood with five other small farms and join this little community, which works and worships together. ‘This neighborhood opened to Mary and Elton and took them in with a warmth that answered her parents’ rejection.’ The story beautifully depicts the simple ties that sustain and enrich this little cluster of six farms and the way in which their neighbors become family for Elton and Mary. Mary is ill with a fever one cold, grey, windy Spring day and crawls back into bed and falls asleep feeling lonely and isolated. She wakes to the sound of a muttering teakettle, the warmth of sunlight, and the humming of her neighbor and friend Josie Tom, who has come over to care for her. Mary knows that Elton must have stopped by Josie’s house on his way to work in the fields and asked Josie to look in on her. The story ends with a brief conversation between Josie and Mary. ‘“Well, are you awake? Are you all right?” “Oh, I’m wonderful,” Mary said. And she slept again.’

Community is not just doing big, spectacular things. It is serving and loving each other within the everyday humdrum routine of life. It is being close and familiar enough to come over and help out a sick neighbor. It is doing ordinary life with gospel intentionality.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Nov 9, 10:51 AM