What place community?

On Sunday I read through 1 Corinthians in one sitting. I was surprised to see just how thoroughly the theme of "community" came up, in pretty much every section of the letter. Lyle Vander Broeck's book, Breaking Barriers: The Possibilities of Christian Community in a Lonely World, picks this up and develops it much further.

Community seems to be a very prominent theme throughout many of Paul's letters. I suppose that should not be surprising given the emphasis that Jesus gave in his Upper Rooom Discourse — again and again telling the disciples that his command to them as he was going away was that they love one another. He even made a focal point in his high priestly prayer, and told the disciples that love was the mark of true discipleship.

But the prevalence of community in the New Testament does come as a bit of a surprise when seen in the context of much of what I've been told — over and over again — in the churches of my experience. "Churches", they said, "have gotten into the habit of spending all their time on community. They've become so inward focussed that they are little more than a country club. It's time to stop wasting time on community, and start reaching the lost." Some variation on that statement seemed to come up whenever anyone suggested developing a deeper, meaningful community. It was curious, since it rarely seemed that the existing community was really much more than a superficial civility — not really like anything that would suggest a love as deep as Jesus love for his followers.

I really wonder what would happen if, instead of seeing deeper community as a threat to evangelism, we saw it as the ground and basis for all that we do. My guess is that people would start grabbing us, and demanding the "reason for the hope that is in us"; because it would be clear that God is among us.

Maybe God's Kingdom cannot be expanded by our direct efforts at all — only by the indirect means of the saints actually living as though the reign of Prince of Peace has already broken into this world.