A Rhythm of Community in a Culture of Individualism

[00:00:00] We are in a six-part series on, being formed by certain rhythms of life, rhythms that we need to consciously apply because they’re up against, cultural norms that we find ourselves in. Gospel communities are going through the studies. Hopefully, all Gospel communities are going through the studies at the moment.

[00:00:21] And I hope they’re helpful for you guys. And today, as Hope said, is a rhythm of community in a culture of individualism. I was naive to think I could cover this in one talk. It’s a huge topic. I’m gonna come at it with… at a slightly different angle to what we do. We often talk about community, we often talk about individualism.

[00:00:42] Gonna come at it with a slightly different angle. I’m not talking necessarily in this talk about this, our structure of Gospel communities, although I will get onto that. But I’m talking about Gospel-shaped community in general. And the angle that I’m coming at is about formation. This is a series about formation.

[00:01:00] We’re thinking about how culture forms us and how these rhythms can form us to be more like Christ. So we’re looking at community as formation, essentially. I’m gonna pray.

[00:01:10] Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you that we can open your word and confidently come to you. And I pray, Lord, that as we, as we spend time together, as we spend time together devoted to, to, to the scripture as, as we spend time together building one another up, that you would use this time to form us, to make us more like you.

[00:01:32] I pray that you’d use me now, and that you would get the glory. And I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. The Finkenwalde Seminary was an underground Bible college in Germany in 1935, at the height of kinda Hitler’s rise to power. Hitler had been changing the culture of Germany from the inside, including the culture of the church, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in his late 20s, early 30s, and he decided to do something about the culture change within the church.

[00:02:03] So he set up Finkenwalde Seminary as a way to form hungry Christians And his way of doing it was not merely knowledge, although he was a, an incredible intellect. he didn’t gather people just to gain more knowledge. He gathered people to have a shared life of learning how to live together as Christians in the midst of that culture We live in a culture of individualism.

[00:02:29] Sociologist Robert Bellah said that radical individualism is the defining trait of America, and that could probably be extended to the modern West. Radical individualism is the defining trait because we are wired, we’re hardwired to do things alone. Individualism is essentially saying that as a culture, we’ve moved away from a communal way of seeing life to an individual way of seeing life.

[00:02:55] And this isn’t just in the sense that we tend to think about ourselves more, but it’s in the sense that we’ve been wired to believe that we will flourish more independently. So generally, in our culture, this is general, the individual’s needs and desires and priorities and expectations get put ahead of any group, get put ahead of work or family or the town or church.

[00:03:20] And there’s a long history of, why this has happened and where individualism has come from. A few key things are the Enlightenment was– that was the intellectual push for, for people to start, leaning on their own reasoning, their own thinking individually as apart from as a community.

[00:03:38] And then the Romantic era, in the eighteenth to nineteenth century brought about expressive individualism, leaning on our own feelings as apart from a collective. And then with modernity and, and commercialism and consumer culture, that brought about the individual choice, our individual choice with everyday things, everyday material objects instead of households and communities, which is why one oven would have been enough for an extended family, but now each nucleus has an oven, a barbecue, a microwave, a grill.

[00:04:14] It’s commercialism, consumer culture mixed with modernity. And then there’s the rise of the iPhone, where we get everything personalized for us. Almost everything we experience online is tailored for individual viewing. Everything is designed for the individual. Now, none of these are bad necessarily. In fact, there’s so much goodness in them.

[00:04:36] But together, they have formed us to believe that flourishing happens alone

[00:04:41] The problem with it, and that we’re experiencing is that if everyone has their own little worlds with themselves in the center, then loneliness becomes rampant. What is planted as individualism gets harvested as loneliness. And this is what we see in our culture. Loneliness is at an all-time high.

[00:05:00] The UK appointed a loneliness minister. Australia hasn’t done that, but the Australian Psychological Society, the APS, has called loneliness in Australia a national silent epidemic What is planted as individualism gets harvested as loneliness, and this is the air we breathe. This is the culture we live in How is that forming us?

[00:05:23] Because it is forming us. It’s why we can be surrounded by people and still feel alone, and it’s why we can, move to a new street and not know anybody’s names. It’s why we find it hard to accept help, and it’s why independence feels like maturity, because it’s forming us

[00:05:40] at Finkenwalde Seminary, not everybody loved the idea of Bonhoeffer’s kind of radical idea to do life together. And one guy visited Bonhoeffer, a friend of Bonhoeffer’s, visited him and wanted to challenge him on it. “Why does your discipleship process have to be so intense?” And he, so the story goes, he rose one morning with him, took him on a rowing boat across the lake and up onto a hill where they could see, the Nazi troops, and he pointed to them, and then he pointed to his seminary, and he said, “This, the seminary, needs to be stronger than this

[00:06:15] Not because– now, we’re not living in Nazi Germany. Far from it. But we are being formed by our culture, and community needs to be stronger than individualism. Otherwise, we’re being formed by it. But as Bonhoeffer goes on to say, this can’t just be any community. It’s not just, it’s not just people.

[00:06:35] It has to be gospel-shaped community. So how does a rhythm of gospel-shaped community help form us in light of the kingdom of God? Two things, realignment and shared life. We’ll go through each one of those, and then we’ll look at some community realities at the end. So realignment. Gospel-shaped community realigns us with God’s design for humanity.

[00:06:59] Gospel-shaped community realigns us with God’s design for humanity. I’m gonna trace this with three images: a mirror, a fire, and a call A mirror.

[00:07:10] When all things were good in the Garden of Eden, God created something unique and he called it very good. Genesis one twenty-seven: Then God said: Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness. Humankind was created to reflect God like an angled mirror. From the top down reflects his likeness to the good world that he created, and then from the ground up reflects the work and the world back to him in worship That’s part of what it means to be created in his image.

[00:07:42] And then g- so God created man and woman and then said, “Yep, that’s good. That’ll do the job. That’ll, somehow share my likeness to the world,” which is wild to even just think that. But then a few verses later, chapter two, verse 18, we kinda stop in our tracks a little bit, I think, if you’re reading through the narrative.

[00:08:01] Because the thing that God just said is very good has something about it which in the Garden of Eden is the only thing that is not good Chapter two, verse 18. The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone Individualism harvests loneliness, and it is not good for the man to be alone. Genesis 1 tells us that we’re created in God’s image, and then Genesis 2 tells us that this image-bearing life was not intended to be alone.

[00:08:29] An angled mirror in the shape of a community reflects the triunity to the world

[00:08:35] The second image is fire. The story goes on, I’m gonna kinda cover a lot of ground here. The story goes on, Adam and Eve essentially kinda turn the mirror on themselves, as it were, and sin and brokenness enter into the world. And in Genesis 11 is the Tower of Babel. God scatters people. He confuses the language and…

[00:08:55] but the story goes on and God continues to pursue them. So by the time we get to Exodus, the next book of the Bible, we begin to see a people set apart for God and begin to live for Him. A fire calls to Moses from a burning bush to bring this people together and out of Egypt. A pillar of fire then leads them all the way to a mountain, on top of which God speaks from the fire And there he gives the Ten Commandments.

[00:09:23] And the Ten Commandments are saying, “Hey, now you’re free. This is how you live.” And half of them are how the people relate to God, then the other half are how we live in community, how we live with one another. And slowly, God is undoing the repercussions of the fall and the repercussions of Babel, the scattering of the people.

[00:09:43] Fast-forward many years, the people of God fail to live in light of the commands. They fail to live as a community. They fail to live as God’s people. But then in the prophets, there’s a promise that these commandments that were given will not just be written on stone tablets, they will be written on the hearts of God’s people

[00:09:59] And there’ll be real change. And then we get to the New Testament. And Jesus comes, and he lives, and he works, and dies, and rises again, and he gives his Spirit. And then there’s fire again. Fire. The fire that led Moses to obey, the fire that burned the pathway to fellow, the fire that rests on the mountain in freedom, the fire through which God speaks, and the fire that seeks to undo Babel and the fall, fire that refines and reforms.

[00:10:25] And in Acts 2, there’s fire resting on each person who received the Holy Spirit and a community was formed and then they started speaking in each other’s languages And languages that were known and understood, and Babel was reversed. What does God create? He creates a people And the Spirit doesn’t simply just fill individuals so that they can go off and live their best Christian lives.

[00:10:47] He fills individuals and makes them one body. 1 Corinthians 12 is about this, verse 27. “Now you,” Paul says, “Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of that one body.”

[00:11:02] A mirror, a fire, and a call. The third image is a call. Let’s go to Matthew 4. It will come up on the screen. I’ll just recite the story. Jesus went for a little beach walk. That’s how it starts. He see- he sees two brothers fishing, Peter and Andrew. They were both fishermen, and they were doing what fishermen do.

[00:11:19] And Jesus saw them, and he called them, ” Come, follow me.” Now, had these brothers heard of Jesus yet had they seen what he’d done? Had they heard of his time in the wilderness? Had they heard what John the Baptist said about him? Here he was, Jesus calling to them. And this call from Jesus was a call to discipleship.

[00:11:43] He says, “Come and follow me.” Generally, it would be a disciple that would go to a rabbi and say, “Hey, can I follow you? Can I follow you? Can I learn from you? Can I follow your steps into the world and learn how to be a disciple?” But this is flipped. Jesus is saying to fishermen, “Come and follow me.”

[00:12:01] He’s calling them to discipleship. “Come and learn from me. Come and do life with me.” And at once, in verse 20, they left their nets and they followed him. And then James and John do the same, and then Matthew and Thomas, and then the rest of the 12 all do the same because Jesus isn’t simply calling individuals, he’s calling a people, a new community, a new family, a new humanity.

[00:12:23] Which is why it’s the 12, like the, like God’s tribes, 12 tribes

[00:12:28] Now we’ve been called into this If you’ve been called by Jesus, you’re called to be realigned with God’s plan for humanity. A mirror, a fire, and a call to reflect the triune God, to be filled with his presence and one with his people, and to follow in the way of Jesus

[00:12:49] there’s a deeper reality as well. How does this actually work? One- once we enter into the faith, we’re not just actually merely just responding to a call. We are, we’re actually existentially united. We’re actually united by what Jesus has done for us.

[00:13:03] His sacrifice paid the price for the death we deserve, and now we’re free. And His resurrection brings us into new life and into a new humanity, and now we live. And through the giving of the Holy Spirit, we’re adopted into His family. Adopted, actually adopted into His family. The Father becomes our Father, and Jesus becomes our brother, and we together form a new humanity, or as the New Testament calls it, one body.

[00:13:30] Soma

[00:13:31] We’re the body of Christ, and we’ve been made that through Jesus’ finished work on the cross and from the grave

[00:13:38] Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it like this He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ

[00:13:49] Christian community means community through and in Jesus Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us

[00:14:02] If you follow Jesus, this is what it looks like

[00:14:05] to become part of the people of God, a new community that undoes Babel and the fall, to create a community that reflects the triunity. Which is why this isn’t about community in general. This isn’t about being together for the sake of being together. This isn’t about becoming a close group of friends.

[00:14:23] This is about gospel-shaped community with the gospel in the center of it Because we’re a people joined together because of the gospel and for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And there will be so many benefits, and hopefully we will make a few close friends.

[00:14:38] community around the gospel

[00:14:40] A rhythm of community realigns us. Rhythm is a, you might be thinking, “How, what’s a rhythm of commu- rhythm is a weird word to use for community.” I get that. It’s a bit of a weird concept. It’s not really a rhythm. Let’s get into some of the rhythmic things of it. The second point is a shared life.

[00:14:58] I remember the first time I visited a, a gospel community, at Anchor Church in Sydney. I was expecting, I went into one of their family gatherings expecting a Bible study, ’cause that’s all I had experienced before that. Bible study, you didn’t eat together, you just rocked up, read the Bible, did a little study, went home, and prayed.

[00:15:16] So I was expecting that, and I walked into a room full of people eating and laughing and praying and talking about Jesus and sharing life together. And I remember thinking, “Oh, this is different. This is very different.” This isn’t just people meeting to learn about Jesus. This is people learning to live like Jesus together.

[00:15:44] Another way that, a rhythm of community forms us is through a shared life, through gospel communities and through practices. Now, gospel communities are what we call our small groups. We often say they’re not merely Bible studies, social activist groups, friendship groups, or a weekly meeting, although they would include those.

[00:16:04] They are groups of people that seek to live out life for God in the every day, and it’s very easy to lose the sight of the beauty of these groups. Very easy, as we’re formed by our culture, and the individualism kind of creeps its way in. But gospel communities are groups of people that are living life for Jesus, having laid our nets to the side and realigning with God’s plan for humanity together.

[00:16:29] Acts 2, the second passage that Min read, Acts 2:42-47, is a key text for our gospel communities, and we’ve talked about it many times before because it is a picture of a shared life together for Jesus

[00:16:47] Gospel communities are also, are also a structure. They’re a church structure that our church has put in place to allow us to be formed by a rhythm of community that means that, gospel communities are not th- a means of becoming a great church, and they’re not an end in themselves. They are an important trellis That allows us to live life for God together.

[00:17:22] Does that make sense? Gospel communities are a church structure that allow us to be formed by a rhythm of community in a culture of individualism. It’s our expression of what Bonhoeffer began in Finkenwalde. And they allow us to step into practicing the way of Jesus together. They’re also not new.

[00:17:42] We didn’t invent them. It’s like hundreds of years of this. Jesus was doing it, and then, like with 12 disciples, and then the intimate three. But then, like hundreds of years of even how church looks in the modern age too, of doing this. It’s not a new thing. People– sometimes people say you’re trying to reinvent the wheel. That’s not what we’re doing at all. It’s a point to a long history of this kind of thing, of a trellis that is giving people the, the means to, to be formed by community

[00:18:17] Now practices, a, a significant amount of what the early church is encouraged to practice and live like in the New Testament letters can actually only happen in community Whether it’s all the over 50 one anothers, or whether it’s the gifts given to build the body in Ephesians 4 or 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, or even James 5, praying for one another or confessing sins.

[00:18:44] It’s all done in community because the Christian life isn’t just something we believe, it’s something we practice, which is why Bonhoeffer created a seminary to live life on life in Germany. You can’t forgive one another by yourself. You can’t be hospitable by yourself. You can’t carry one another’s burdens by yourself, or encourage one another by yourself, or confess your sins to one another by yourself.

[00:19:07] We need other people. So God puts us in community where the very things that form us into the image of Jesus require other people

[00:19:23] How drastically different is that to the world, to the culture that we live in, where we believe that flourishing happens independently, where we believe freedom comes from our own desires, and maturity is independence? But that reaps loneliness and does not form us into the image of God. As a community, we practice the way we are created to live, and we are formed away from individualism as we do so.

[00:19:56] As a, I should say, as a gospel-shaped community, we practice the way we’re created to live Now how are we gonna do this? Actually first, how are we going with this? Bonhoeffer taking his friend to see the intense training and saying, “This seminary must be stronger than this,” is our gospel-shaped community stronger than the individualism we live in?

[00:20:24] Is it? Do we experience that?

[00:20:28] How did Jesus do it? It wasn’t intense training. Jesus didn’t do it through intense training. It was daily submission with close people around Him, committing to prayer, living in obedience, humbling Himself, living through weakness. And Paul did the same, and the 12 did the same.

[00:20:50] 11. And it was centered around Christ. It was gospel-shaped community

[00:21:03] Something I don’t have time to talk about, I’ve really been thinking that I need to do a part two of this. Something I don’t have time to talk about is mission. Because there’s a whole, there’s a whole, outcome of mission through a gospel-shaped community together. Like ima- imagine, imagine this kind of communi- gospel-shaped community spreading out into the world, a world that is rampant with loneliness.

[00:21:29] And it would begin to form not only us, but everyone around us, which was God’s plan to mirror ref- reflecting Him to the world. That’s what happened in the first century. God’s people when th- the early church, when they got together, it– that’s what… That’s how Christianity broke out into the world.

[00:21:49] It wasn’t through, incredible preaching, it was through Christians living together, breaking down social barriers and ethnic barriers. People, they understood community back then, but it was always within ethnic barriers. But then they saw the church that just broke them down.

[00:22:08] Jews and Gentiles living together? Slave and free? Paul sending Onesimus back to Philemon so that he can live with him and be a part of his church? That is radical. And, people began to see this ragtag group of people living like family. And what was the reason? Something had to be the reason.

[00:22:31] And the reason was the gospel. It was gospel-shaped community bringing us together. So we become formed as we live like this. But so can the world To become more like Jesus, the kingdom breaks in through a rhythm of gospel-shaped community

[00:22:54] Let’s get on to some reality, some community realities. Again, oh man, I feel like I’m given so many, here are some thoughts. This is not everything. This is about formation, and there are so many other angles to look at it. Like I’m not even mentioning identities and rhythms, the things we usually talk about, and, kids and structures.

[00:23:13] I’m trying to give a broader look at how community can form us. So here are some realities. Six things. One, community is not chemistry or connection. I have a really close friend in England that whe-whenever we speak, it’s an hour of just talking about Jesus. It’s a wonderful relationship that I’m so thankful for, and I’m thankful to technology that I can still connect with him And similarly, I could meet someone at, who I get on with like never before, and we can have chemistry and instant friendship.

[00:23:49] But chemistry and connectivity are not Community by definition are the people around you in your immediacy. My friend on the other side of the world can’t watch me mess up with my kids and point me to a better and patient, more patient father. Or the friend that I get along with better than anyone but doesn’t live close can’t bear my burdens of everyday life.

[00:24:13] Community are the people God has placed around you in your everyday life. Gospel-shaped community is us

[00:24:23] Secondly, on purpose. In an individualistic society, gospel-shaped community is not just gonna happen to you. It won’t just happen. We have to be purposeful. How a rhythm of community can form us in light of the kingdom of God and form us into more godly men and women for Christ, then we need to make the choice to be together, and we need to make the choice to get around a table, make the choice to pursue friends who will point you to Christ and who you can learn to do the same with.

[00:24:53] It takes conscious effort. It takes purpose Thirdly, with sacrifice. Sometimes being a part of, yeah, sometimes being a part of a community is w-wildly inconvenient. It… But if we see the value of it and the beauty of it, then maybe we need to lay some other things down Like Peter and Andrew laying down their nets.

[00:25:22] Like the church in Acts sharing possessions so that no one was in need. Like in John thirteen, Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and then saying, “Now you go and do likewise.” Sometimes we need to sacrifice convenience or timing or possessions or pride. Sometimes we need to sacrifice extracurricular or overtime or another renovation or whatever it is Fourthly, with staying power.

[00:25:56] Sharing of life together doesn’t happen overnight. It is slow, so stick it out and have staying power. Stay long enough for people to know you, to really know you For someone to celebrate with you about something that might appear to be normal, but they know that you’ve longed for it. For someone to squeeze your shoulder when something gets said that they know will hit your nerve For someone to rebuke you in love towards a God of forgiveness because you’ve given permission to do that in a life shared together

[00:26:34] Fifthly, without expectation. Bonhoeffer again, by the way, everybody should read Life Together. The first chapter of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Don’t worry about the rest, just read the first chapter. It’s so good. This is from that chapter. He says, “Those who love their dream of Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community.”

[00:27:02] Even if their personal intentions are ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial

[00:27:09] What he’s saying is community will not do everything for us. Despite everything I’ve just said, it’s not utopia. It will be messy and difficult. Like Jesus’s 12 disciples, he got Judean fishermen, and then a Roman-employed tax collector, and then a political extremist, zealot, and just said, ” it’s not utopia.”

[00:27:31] It’s not “Come on in. You guys will get on really well.” No. Christian community is not utopia, and to expect it to be that, to be easy and to be perfect, Bonhoeffer’s saying, will kill the community itself, which is a radical way of thinking So our eyes need to be set on this last point, sixth, with Christ-centeredness.

[00:27:56] Now, none of this saves us. None of community saves us. Being in community does not make us, or make us saved. It doesn’t make us any more holy The work is done completely and wholly through Jesus. Praise the Lord But in our new humanity, it is not good for us to be alone. And as we seek to be formed into who he’s created us to be, then the only community that will form us in any way, in light of the kingdom of God, and away from individualism, is Christ-centered community.

[00:28:33] As we point to one– as we point one another to his grace, and his love, and his work, and his death, and his resurrection, and his ascension, and his promise, and his Spirit, and his return. Gospel-centered community forms us in a culture of individualism by realigning us to God’s plan for humanity. As a mirror, formed by the fire of the Spirit, and called together by Jesus.

[00:29:01] And as we share life around Jesus, practicing the way of Jesus together, and this will then flood out into the world. As Brad Watson says, and I’ll finish with this quote, “Loneliness will not be cured by better apps, more events, or superior branding. It will be cured when ordinary people decide to build ordinary, faithful, embodied friendships again, on purpose, with sacrifice, with prayer, with staying power.

[00:29:38] The most radical thing you can do in modern life is not hustle harder. Instead, create a small, stable community where people are actually known, and refuse to let it fall apart.” Amen.