Community of Love

I have something I have been wrestling with.

It keeps gnawing away at me.

I think I set it aside and then it springs back up in front of me.

I am unsettled and restless when I try to ignore it.

I find myself meditating on it when I sit to rest.

It wont leave me alone.


I am wrestling with ministry.

Ministry with a catchy name.

Ministry with a bank account.

Ministry with a building.

Ministry with an unswerving focus.

Ministry directed towards people; run by people who love Jesus.

And yet, ministry that crushes people and runs against the grain of The Way.

Before I go any farther let me just say that I have been the "people who love Jesus" and running a ministry.

I have sat underneath a "name" and run the Kingdom of God like it were a business.

I have been desolate and lost and yet still taking a place of judgement and order in other people's lives.

I get it that what I am saying is offensive.

Because I would have been offended.

Since that time in my life I have just wandered around, in and out of "ministry", and I have wrestled with what ministry LOOKS like.

What are we really supposed to be doing?

I get it that Jesus wants us to love people; to take care of people.

Isn't that what community does?

ANY community?

The more I chew on this the more I am drawn in, not to what the church isn't, but to what we are meant to be.

I've seen little glimpses of a powerful community rallying under the banner of Yeshua.

I've seen needs met, bills paid, hearts healed.

I've been on the receiving end of the gift of community.

I've been on the giving end...

Either way, it is life changing.

But I don't understand why the church is run like a business; why people are slipping through the cracks; why needs go unmet because it doesn't fit into a budget; why hearts are broken and left unhealed.

We ARE his body, right?

We ARE his people, right?

And we ALL know that this life is temporary and fading away.

Why are we so fixated on THINGS?

Why are people in our own communities falling away for lack of heart connection?

So, then I heard the christian voice in my head ask, "well, if people really set aside their 'ministries' to focus on their families, would all the needs of the people around them really be met?"

Hell yes.

Because if a woman is truly loved by her husband and he makes her first, she then is free to love her children and make them first.

Her children then are free to love each other and the people around them. They learn healthy love and not a distorted love.

This one little family becomes a shelter of joy and peace.

And people are drawn to joy and peace.

If we stop battling to take away the right for homosexuals to get married and start learning to love them and draw them in, they are then free to learn the power of real love.

If we stop judging and trying to "fix" everyone we know and make it our priority to love them, even as they are, they learn the power of grace and relentless love.

If we draw boundaries against sin and we all hold each other to the heart of the Father without trying to control one another, we ALL learn the radiating, earth shattering exploding song of real love.

So, the problem with ministry is that it is limited.

Money and budgets limit us.

Names and people groups limit us.

Community, full and strong and free from striving, frees us.

Love creates love.

Love grows.

Love expands.

If the bride of Christ were clinging to the hem of his garment, instead of sitting off to the side thinking of how to best "serve" she would be a free woman.

So, I'll go to church because I love my community who also attends.

I genuinely love to sit next to my husband and friends and listen to Dave talk about Jesus.

Mostly because Dave is a nomad.

His heart is for the power of God's community, not for the success of a church.

He and Brittany wander around, pouring love that grows into communities and broken hearts.

They see the people who are lost and broken.

God has been teaching me to let go of what the church is NOT lately.

It is a painful ripping of my sense of justice.

I want to defend the people who are wronged by the business end of church.

I want to rise up a different camp to oppose the wrongdoer.

But that's not Jesus either.

Jesus didn't worry about making a new camp.

He didn't start all over and make a "new" Bride of Christ.

He made the old ones new again.

He breaks away our opposition and pride to set us on a throne of hope.

So, thank God for community!

Thank God for people who will join in and live life with us!

Thank God for real love that cannot be contained in just me; in just my family; in just my little community.

Organic community has no choice but to grow because love is the seed.