A PLACE TO PRAY
AND WORSHIP - The community helps us grow, too, as it becomes a workshop for
prayer and worship. Both by instruction and by example, the New Testament
teaches us to pray and to pray for one another (Eph. 6:18, Jas. 5:16). We are
called as well to a life of worship and praise. Yet, frankly, our experiences
of prayer and worship in the church often shunt us toward merely watching
others pray and take active roles in worship. As helpful as those experiences
may be, being spectators simply isn't enough. We need a lab. We ourselves need
to pray for each other. Each of us needs to be prayed for personally. And the
small community is precisely the place where we can experiment and learn the
life of prayer.
When I am not
involved in a Christian community, it is the times of prayer and worship that I
miss the most. Many of us are never really prayed for beyond a brief mention in
one of those quick-and-dirty list prayers. I once privately offered a simple
prayer of blessing for a friend who had been in public ministry for many years.
I was overwhelmed when he said to me afterward, "No one has ever prayed
for me like that before."
We dare not
neglect each other like that! Similarly, as we learn the ways of worship in the
small community, we not only deepen our own lives but also enrich the life of
public worship. In my experience, community is at its best when it becomes a workshop
for prayer and worship.
A PLACE TO
SERVE - The community is also where we learn to strip away our self-interest in
order to serve others. It is here that we learn to share what God has given us,
whether it be goods or spiritual gifts. It is also here that we learn to be
served, though we are sometimes prideful and reluctant like Peter, who balked
at Jesus washing his feet (Jn. 13:2-10). Sometimes we are the washers and
sometimes the washees, but in many ordinary ways we can learn what submission
and service mean.
One community I
know gave time and money so a mother worn down by the demands of young children
could take a spiritual retreat. Others have found practical ways to swap mowers
and ladders and child care; some have explored group buying to help each other
grow in stewardship. I have seen people abandon a special outing to bail out a
friend’s leaky basement and give time freely to help remodel a bathroom or
repair a car. In whatever ways, community means watching over one another for
good, knowing that as we serve, all of us are growing stronger in Christ.
Howard
Macy is a Professor Emeritus at George Fox University. He is the author of
Rhythms of the Inner Life.