Authentic Community

It has been a while since I have been involved in a small community group. I have led and been in several groups over the years, but have been living outside of a small community for over a year now. Well, through a series of recent conversations and readings, it has become clear that I need to reengage in this aspect of life. Speaking to several people yesterday only confirmed what I have been feeling, summed up well in these words from Shawchuck and Heuser:

Authentic community is a place where we can be our real selves with God in the presence of another. Only superstar saints can make the Christian journey alone. The rest of us weaklings, whose promises to God always far exceed our practices, whose spirits are emaciated from lack of bread for the journey, and whose trail is marked with the scars of our many failings and fallings, we know that we cannot make this journey alone. Nonetheless, we keep trying, because we know of no other way. But there is another way, and it is the way of covenant communities, small groups of spiritual pilgrims journeying together, each sharing the others’ burdens, and each holding the other up in the most intimate and private affairs of life and journey. An essential ingredient for being formed in the image of Christ is the movement between being alone and being together, sustaining solitude and community.

Shawchuck and Heuser, Leading the Congregation, 132-134.