Exploring the Apostolic - 5b.
What does the apostolic look like in this New Era?
Part 3 - Apostolic Communities
b) Why we need Apostolic Communities
Introduction.
This is a big subject, because underneath it is a bigger question: why do we need community at all? If you live in the West, you live in a radically independent culture. It pays lip service to community but rarely understands what community requires. It is often more interested in individual rights and privacy than in the self-sacrifice for the good of the whole that community needs if it is going to work well. Every culture has some degree of independence, but the West has become radically independent, and we are seeing the fruit of it: the breakdown of family and social structures, growing fragmentation and dysfunction, and a loss of trust and of any shared sense of what is true.
So whenever we talk about community, in any arena, we first have to understand why it matters. Here are three starting points, especially for those of us who follow Jesus.
1. Community and the image of God
My understanding of community starts long before humanity came on the scene. God as Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is the perfect community. And that community said, "Let us make mankind in our image" (Genesis 1:26). Man and woman were created in God's image to be community on the earth, representing Him. That should always be our starting point: any community should be formed in the image of God.
2. Community and family
I believe the purest form of community is family. God showed His intent by establishing the first community as a family: "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). That's why, whenever I think about building any kind of community, whether a church, a business or a café, I ask: how would I handle this in my family? I don't just mean the nuclear family (me, my wife and kids). Usually I mean the wider, extended family. Many cultures have lost that, and we have to rediscover it.
3. Communities are different and diverse
Families and communities are different and diverse, and that is by God's design. Diversity shouldn't just be tolerated. It should be embraced, engaged with and celebrated. First, it reflects the Trinity, which is itself diverse. Second, it transforms us, because it pulls us away from self-focus and our tendency towards narcissism and self-righteousness.
We need a range of communities to navigate and enjoy life. Some we live in. Some we belong to for mutual encouragement and enrichment. Some are for work. All of them are necessary for us to be truly human in the way God intended. Without community we become withdrawn, self-absorbed and often hollow, and we lose our capacity for empathy and compassion.
Why apostolic communities?
Hopefully those three points show why community matters. But why apostolic communities as a distinct form? Why not just be part of a church community?
Let me be clear: apostolic people can and do thrive within local churches, and an apostolic community is not a better or superior kind of church. It's a different shape for a particular calling. I'm suggesting apostolic communities for apostolically gifted people called to pioneer outside the established church.
This isn't a new idea. The Celtic Christians of Iona and Lindisfarne lived it. Columba founded Iona in 563, and from there Aidan went to Lindisfarne in 635. These were apostolic communities: people prayed, worked and learned together, then went out across the land, often for long periods, before coming back for rest, restoration and equipping. Aidan famously walked rather than rode, so he could meet people on their level, stop and talk with them, and bless them. These communities didn't take territory by force. They won the hearts of whole regions through presence, kindness and prayer.
Here's why we need them today.
1. The need for fluidity
These communities need to be fluid. People will come and go a lot. Some won't be there every week, and some may be away for long periods. Because of the nature of the call, they will need different forms and rhythms of community, different ways of walking out the disciplines of faith, and their own ways of holding mutual submission.
2. Focus and intensity
These communities have a different focus and intensity. I believe the focus of the church in general is to gather, encourage one another and work together to settle the land. I think of Jeremiah 29:
"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." (Jeremiah 29:5–7)
I know this was spoken to a people in exile, with a promise that they would return home after seventy years. But it echoes what the Lord said to His people when they entered the promised land. We could argue that our "exile" lasts until the fullness of His Kingdom comes, and that this is what the church is called to do until then.
The focus of an apostolic community is different. It exists to break new ground, to "take cities"*, and to disrupt and reform the church where it has settled into religion and stopped reproducing. Its rhythm is to gather, discern and go, and we see that pattern clearly in the church at Antioch:
"While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off." (Acts 13:2–3)
They gathered to worship and fast, they discerned what the Spirit was saying, and they sent. That is the heartbeat of an apostolic community.
It has an intensity and pace that reproduces families. The church, like a natural family, has a reproductive cycle that produces children, and it takes time for children to become families.
3. What is reproduced
There's a clear rule in the natural and spiritual world: you can only reproduce what you are. An apple seed will only ever produce an apple tree, never a pear tree. It's the same spiritually. That's why Jesus said, "By their fruit you will recognise them." The fruit He meant isn't what people have done or seemingly achieved, such as leading people to Christ, healings and deliverance. It is the reproduction of God's character and glory in their lives and communities: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness (Galatians 5:22–23).
The same is true of church communities. We reproduce after our own kind:
An individual reproduces a group of individuals.
A team reproduces people who can relate while working towards a goal. Once the goal is reached, the group starts to dysfunction or fall apart.
A community reproduces community: people committed relationally, who know how to work through disagreement, reach consensus and sacrifice for the good of the whole.
4. Understanding and belonging
Apostolic people also need communities where they are easily understood, because understanding leads to belonging. If you are constantly having to explain or defend yourself because you are called to see the world differently, it wears you down. You get wounded, sidelined, even rejected, and you never feel that you belong. God created in all of us a need to belong, to be understood and to understand others.
A community that shares a way of seeing the world meets that need. There will still be difference and diversity to work through. But everyone there understands the call to break new ground and take cities, to take risks, and to reproduce families and not just children. They know the community is built for that purpose and that everything about it is shaped around it.
5. Rest, equipping and restoration
Although the focus is to gather, discern and go, life happens. People need time for healing and restoration. Every community needs rest. Seasoned and new people alike need equipping. So an apostolic community will always have this shape and provision built into it, just as Iona and Lindisfarne were places to return to as well as places to be sent from.
I hope that gives some insight into why I believe these communities are needed. In the next blog I'll try to paint a picture of what an apostolic community might look like.
* A note on "taking cities": I want to be careful not to be misunderstood. In history the Christian church has literally taken cities by violence and force. That is not what I mean. When I use this phrase, I mean influencing a city through kindness, compassion and blessing, in the same spirit as Jeremiah 29: seeking the peace and prosperity of the city and praying for it to prosper. Aidan of Lindisfarne is a good picture of this. He chose to walk among the people rather than ride above them, and he stopped to talk, listen and bless whoever he met. Northumbria was won not by conquest but by love.