I was born not just into a family but into a community. I had the joy and challenges of being raised in one of the tight-knit rural Ulster mill villages which no longer exists, save for the names memorialised in cricket clubs.
School, church, cricket and scouts were the four squares in most of our lives. Neighbours were supportive. I’m not idealising my past but it is part of my psyche and my values.
I have lived and ministered elsewhere – like multi-storey tower blocks. Community didn’t exist apart from accidental meetings with three neighbours coming and going on the same floor.
The Bible and the Christian faith is about community. Whilst there are faith heroes in both Jewish and Christian scriptures, the main thrust in both is about life in community and the redemption of the community – the people of God.
I believe the church must be in the gospel business of creating community, of being a welcoming – or perhaps more importantly an invitational community. So far we can all nod our heads. But to whom is the invitation really open? Is it only open to people who are mirror images of ourselves, or of our image of what the ideal church member should be like? Do we read and pray with the scriptures to reenforce our own views, or to have them challenged? Don’t tell me I am imagining all this. At present a couple of different denominations, including my own, are having very public differences as to who is fit for office – as an elder or a bishop.
Too often I fear that in defining our churches and congregations, we use the values of society, rather than Biblical standards which challenge them. The “successful” church is one surrounded by the chariots of affluence on a Sunday morning, too many driven by people half way round a city or several miles cross-country just to meet like-minded people of similar social status and aspirations; people who chose their church as carefully as their children’s school and orthodonist.
Where is God calling us to locate in a faith community? With whom does God wish us to share and be involved with in our witness? What groups and individuals find us and our congregations cold places and why?
Christ commanded us to invite people whose faces definitely didn’t fit our prejudices. His unconditional love challenges our narrow concepts of community.
Houston McKelvey
Published in the News Letter on Saturday last