Two Visions of Community

Two churches in my neighborhood offer a study in surprising similarity.

One church is a theologically liberal congregation; the other is the theologically conservative church where I pastor. Both started meeting in 1867. Both grew considerably with the city of Washington, DC, in the years surrounding the Second World War. Both struggled as the surrounding blocks were decimated by a wave of race-charged rioting. By the late twentieth century, both congregations had dwindled in number and consisted largely of older commuters from the suburbs. In response, both purged their roles to remove members who no longer attended. The future of both was in question.

But then starting in the late 1990s, both began to grow. Both attracted young people who were moving into the city, and both regrew roots into the neighborhood. For many years, the growth of both churches was roughly the same: the membership of one never strayed more than a hundred or so people from the other. Both congregations care for the poor in the neighborhood. Both buzz with activity on Sunday mornings and throughout the week. Both receive attention in the secular press for their tightknit community.

But despite a similar history, these two churches could not differ more at their core. When I first moved to Washington in the 1990s, the pastor of this other church didn't call himself a Christian. He didn't believe in the atonement, didn't believe in physical resurrection, and, as he explained to me one day, wasn't even sure he believed in God! Whereas our church logo cites Romans 10:17 ("Faith comes from hearing"), theirs describes them as "the church of the open communion." Ours is a congregation centered on the historic Christian gospel. Theirs is a congregation, I would maintain, focused on an entirely different gospel. And yet both appear to thrive.

My point? You don't need God to "build community" in a church.

How to Build Church Community without the Gospel

Now, if you're reading this book you probably do believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You probably do believe in a holy God, in the reality of sin, in the power of the atonement. And beyond that, you likely hold the Bible to be the perfect Word of God. So for you, community without the gospel isn't a danger. Right?

That's exactly where I intend to challenge you. I think we build community without the gospel all the time.

Leave aside the theologically liberal church I just described. My concern for the evangelical church isn't so much that we're out to deny the gospel in fostering community. Instead, my concern is that, despite good intentions, we're building communities that can thrive regardless of the gospel.

I'll give you an example. Let's say that a single mother joins my church. Who is she naturally going to build friendships with? Who is naturally going to understand her best? Other single moms, of course. So I encourage her to join a small group for single moms, and sure enough, she quickly integrates into that community and thrives. Mission accomplished, right? Not quite.

What occurred is a demographic phenomenon and not necessarily a gospel phenomenon. Single moms gravitate to each other regardless of whether or not the gospel is true. This community is wonderful and helpful — but its existence says nothing about the power of the gospel.

In fact, most of the "tools" we use to build community center on something other than the gospel:

• Similar life experience: Singles groups, newly married Bible studies, and young professionals networks build community based on demographic groupings.

• Similar identity: Cowboy churches, motorcycle churches, arts churches, and the like are all gospel-believing churches with something other than the gospel at the core of their identity.

• Similar cause: Ministry teams for feeding the hungry, helping an elementary school, and combating human trafficking build community based on shared passion for a God-honoring cause.

• Similar needs: Program-based churches build community by assembling people into programs based on the similarity of their felt needs.

• Similar social position: Sometimes a ministry — or an entire church — gathers the "movers and shakers" in society.

I recognize this probably sounds ridiculous. In the space of a hundred words I've critiqued Bible studies for single moms, singles groups, and hunger ministries. But stick with me for a moment. Underneath all these community-building strategies is something we need to expose and examine with fresh eyes.

Let's go back to the small group for single moms. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be with people of similar life experience. It's entirely natural and can be spiritually beneficial. But if this is the sum total of what we call "church community," I'm afraid we've built something that would exist even if God didn't.

My goal in writing this book is not for us to feel guilty whenever we enjoy a friendship that would probably exist even if the gospel wasn't true. My goal is not to encourage churches to aim at some entirely unrealistic model of relationship where we never share anything in common but Christ. Rather, my goal is twofold:

1. To recognize that building community purely through natural bonds has a cost as well as a benefit. Often, we look at tools like the single moms small group and see only positive. But there is a cost as well: if groups like this come to characterize community in our churches, then our community ceases to be remarkable to the world around us.

2. To adjust our aspiration. Many relationships that naturally form in our churches would exist even if the gospel weren't true. That's good, right, and helpful. But in addition, we should aspire for many relationships that exist only because of the gospel. So often, we aim at nothing more than community built on similarity; I want us to aim at community characterized by relationships that are obviously supernatural. And by supernatural I don't imply the mystical, vaguely spiritual sense in which pop culture uses the term. I mean the very biblical idea of a sovereign God working in space and time to do what confounds the natural laws of our world.

Two Types of Community

In this book, I'll contrast two types of community that exist in gospel-preaching, evangelical churches. Let's call one "gospel-plus" community. In gospel-plus community, nearly every...