I believe the bible to be the Word of the living
God..However whether it is Institutional..house..internet fellowship..to truly love one anotherI can say it truly misses the mark as there is very little love for many of the ones who consistently fall thru the cracks all of them. However..I am personally determined to grow while I still have breath and truly love those who have wounded me and many others. That is what I can do to practice my faith. I also am growing to speak to those who have offended me as the bible says to seek forgiveness and and forgive those who trespassed against me.

I can learn from the LOrd what He wants me to do personally each and every day thru the scriptures and by HIS Holy Spirit..to do and see more clearly where.. when.. and how to fellowship It takes patience and the love of the lord and other brothers and sisters as number one.

However another thing that has happened is the flaky stuff that has come into the churches which offends God and is mixed with the New Age and many churches are getting away from the bible as their source of hearing from God..so ..here I am left with a deep sadness..and a realizing that the falling away is still continuing in these last days..that I cannot fellowship in the truest sense because of that.

That is the problem I hear from many who have left church period. God will judge us all..but that is where I am..it is a difficult time for all of us worldwide. I must remain true to the LORD and not be a part of this heretical teachings. I pray for patience..Godly wisdom..and Godly love to my brothers and sisters and to my fellow man
I enjoyed reading the articles on here this evening. I did not see anything that was mean spiritied. Thanks for your time ..till next time

The commenter who said Knights of Columbus gave a perfect example. My Catholic grandfather was born in the 1920’s when you could literally walk around the city in a day. He’s been a lifelong member of Kiwanis too. I saw somewhere recently an article about how community service organizations have been replaced by ‘activity groups’ like the Sierra Club. Wealth and sprawl seem to multiply individualism, and I think a lot of the present day emphasis on “community” is because the natural American experience of it has genuinely faded away over the past 50 to 100 years.

Then you have my parents, who still attend an Episcopalian service but their “community” as they see it is their lifelong friends and family members, nearly all of whom happen to be at least nominal christians of various (high church) protestant denominations. Then of course they have the network of local connections that not only bring so much assistance to an upper-middle class lifestyle, they also generate mutual good feelings besides. To them, that’s community.

My brother and his wife attend an evangelical, non-demoninational service and keep an active social life among their friends, most of whom are in the same congregation with kids the same age. They’re basically conservative yuppies, career and family oriented, who love the Lord and help their friends & family often. I don’t know if that’s community, but it’s definitely a network of close and not-so-close relationships.

As for myself, I left town and set out looking for a neighborhood full of Jesus Freaks for whom God and church far outranked personal connections and/or civic associations. For ten years, I found what I longed for, and I was glad. It was much like what Frank Viola is promoting. I wish I’d been able to stay there and I hope I can experience something like it again.

But iMonk, I have to say it’s possible none of these four puts the others to shame in the way you asked. It depends on who’s asking, for it seems there are many different definitions – and degrees – of “community”.

Still, what I want – and I think, you as well – is community IN the church. If I could find that, I might even put up with mass once a week. Maaaaaybe.

“I am a bit confused by the dismissive comments surrounding Witherington’s, and by way of extension, other critiques. Accurate description must precede legitimate prescription. If Viola and Barna got the history wrong, their ideas may still be provocative, even helpful, and life-giving. But the burden of proof would be on them not those that underscored how incautious Viola and Barna were with historical sources.”

I’m with this guy…period. If Viola and Barna care so much about the church and it’s flourishing, you’d think they’d do some actual credible research before making erroneous claims and basing a “constructive” sequel on them.

I thought I ‘d comment of this:

“I’m frequently at mass and that appears to be the most individualistic kind of service imaginable. Yes, everyone does this the liturgy and eucharist together. But after that?? Where do I look to see evangelicals put to shame in terms of community?”

What you are seeing is another basic difference. The Mass is about God and Him alone. We are there to worship and receive Him and all other purposes are secondary including the Gospel readings and the homily and celebrating as a family. These are all played out elsewhere in the Church through groups like the Knights of Columbus, but not a mass. And like all things some parishes have very developed active community events and some don’t. I doubt
many of them would put the “evangelicals to shame”.

Your point about individualism in the mass is well taken – in fact traditional Masses are even less overtly about community than they are about joining in silent prayer with the Priest. Community is what is expected to develop as a result of the Host, not through the liturgy.

The trauma of World War One was the trigger for the switch from post-mil optimism to pre-mil pessimism, but the expression of the switch was to flee the post-mil optimism of building a Christian world to the pre-mil pessimism of personal salvation and Only personal salvation. From building a future to awaiting an airlift out. Both these gospels are out-of-balance, just in opposite directions. One all-community, all here-and-now, the other all-individual, all hereafter.

This is compounded by the “hereafter” being Fluffy Cloud Heaven with harps & halos instead of Resurrection into a New Heavens & New Earth, a transition I suspect dates from Victorian sentimental romanticism.

Jordan:

When “this world is simply a waiting room” for the afterlife or The End, you get fruits of indifference, passivity, and runaway pietism. Can’t do much in the way of great deeds when you’re just sitting around waiting for The End. Can’t really live when your only goal in life is to make sure you pass God’s Litmus Tests so you’ll go when that trumpet sounds. Grinning Apocalyptism just makes you look like some sort of death cult, and you don’t even have the baroque nightmare-fuel sense of style like Chronicles of Riddick’s Necromongers.

At 52, I’m trying to launch a second career as a science-fiction writer. (It’s NOT easy.) And lit-SF shows a similar transition to what happened to Evangelicalism around World War One. Sometime around 1968, the futures of SF made a similar transition from Bright Futures to Dark Futures, from Great Big Beautiful Tomorrows you wanted to live to see to Crapsack Dystopia du Jours you wanted to die to escape.

And attempts at Christian SF have climbed on the same bandwagon. Too much emphasis on Persecution Dystopias, too much cross-contamination from Christian Apocalyptic. (Where the only future allowed is the one from Late Great Planet Earth and Left Behind — seven years of Antichrist Dystopia followed by The End.)

Christians in SF have an opportunity to provide hope, only we need to show a hope other than The Second Coming, a hope of the minor eucatastrophes along the way instead of skipping directly to and dwelling on The Final Eucatastrophe.

All dating back to the reaction against the mainstreams’ Social Gospel around 100 years ago. Fleeing from a Gospel that was all-social without personal salvation, they clung to a Gospel of Personal Salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation. Instead of a Gospel of Post-Mil here-and-now works, a Gospel of Pre-Mil/Pre-Trib pessimism (”Everything’s a crapsack world. So what? It’s All Gonna Burn. I’m SAVED! Twinkle Twinkle coming Christ; beam ME up to Paradise!”)”

So, so true. I think you just nailed on the head the deep-rooted problem of evangelicism: too many of us believe this world is simply a waiting room. We’re so scared of becoming a ‘works-based’ church that we miss the point of why Christ came.

Do we truly believe that Christ is the greatest news for the entire world, not just in the afterlife, but right here and now? Is living my life for Christ the best possible way to live my life, regardless of what might happen tomorrow? And if so, why don’t I live like it?

This is the question that the Evangelical church needs to answer. And the answer, I would wager to guess, has nothing to do with a better sound system or hiring another pastor.

You asked for examples of “deeper levels of community” than that found in the average evangelical church congregation. I was a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church (founding church of the 9 Marks ministry) for two and a half years, and I found the deepest level of community there that I have found at ANY church, whether Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, etc. Even more importantly, it was deep community that was carefully formed around what the Bible itself *teaches* about church community. The local church, and the blessing and challenge of membership in it, were taken seriously at CHBC, because they are a serious matter in the Bible. I think that this is the major reason for the healthiness and fruitfulness of the church.

At the current church body of which I am a member, Desert Springs Church of Albuquerque, NM, we are working toward a similar kind of deeper community. By God’s grace, may it be so!