another community blog - apprenticeship 3.0

I’ve been thinking about our community discussions and began to worry about some of my past comments about community failures. I’m worried that in my reaction to community that somehow falls just short of the mark, I sound like I am emphasizing individualism. That is really not the case at all. I don’t wish for each of us to focus on himself more, I wish for the community to focus on individuals more, and in ways that promote growth.
So I’ve searched for a simple word or phrase that might summarize what I feel is a fault of community that bothers me. What could it be that causes a community to think it is mindful of individuals and yet neglect their pain and needs?
Maybe I’ve found one. I see too often community serving the purpose of policing the individual. Even some good words that I use often, become one-sided and perpetuate the problem. Accountability, for example, has begun to imply policing behavior. When our community function reaches this point, it implies an assumed hierarchy of spiritual maturity among those policing and those being policed. It also causes us to measure spiritual maturity based on behavior and often by the most absurd things. Submission to rules becomes the most important indicator of spiritual maturity rather than ownership of spiritual disciplines that may very well include the same rules. “Slip-ups” are interpreted as rebellion and treated as intentional wrong doing rather than a failure to do “right”. Many people will learn not to “mess up” but will be no more “right hearted” than someone who slips and breaks the rules.
Back when I responded to community talk with a strong burden for hurting individuals in our community who I felt were being neglected, it was not because I wanted us to focus on ourselves and take care of our own problems. I wanted us as a community to minister to rather than police individuals within our community.
This form of community makes impossible some of the problems that I outlined with community in that post. Namely, how can an immature member find his security in the community rather than Jesus when he is being ministered to and discipled by the community as an individual? The community will then see his individual needs and minister to him accordingly. He will not fall through the cracks. But when a community ministers to it’s self, becomes self-serving, individuals find identity in the community itself and security from being counted among them. Then the community doesn’t minister to individuals, but individuals minister to the community. It becomes an organization or corporation existing to perpetuate it’s self.
Ok, maybe I’ve just re-hashed my previous post here rather than shedding new light. But maybe if I keep re-hashing, I’ll get a little more each time and eventually come to something that is helpful.