A few months ago I was meeting with my Pastor over coffee at a local community friendly Cafe. (Cafe 407). He had suggested that I should consider starting some kind of bible group among people I knew. He told me I could use the church building and that he would help me in anyway I needed. For weeks I was against the idea. Something about it just seemed like I would be selling myself, or trying to sell myself, to people. The idea made me feel like a televangelist without the suit or satellites TV's.
Awhile later I was sitting in that same cafe drinking my coffee and thinking through some new idea's with Jesus. I noticed they had a separate meeting room that they rented out during the week. I asked the manager how much it was to rent out their community room and found it was only $15 an hour.
I sat down and my mind began racing. I began thinking how it would look and feel to start a community oriented bible group. I had trouble controlling the speed of my thoughts and idea's. It was like drinking coffee right before I went to sleep, my dreams were racing through my mind.
I began researching community bible groups. I started remembering idea's I had heard or experienced before about new ways to have church.
A friend of mine had started a community oriented home church a few years prior and I began remembering our conversations in the past.
I would meet Scott for coffee and he and I would talk about his church, or how he was developing their community and such. At the time of our conversations I would have a hard time connecting with his idea's of what community should be. Partly because scott is a genius when it comes to community, Jesus, and the bible. I hadn't experienced the need for community within the church or in my own life and so I found it hard to relate to or understand some of the things he and I would speak about.
I met with my pastor and began talking to him about my idea for the community bible group. It was a funny conversation because it's basically what he had suggested to me months ago. It just felt different to me, this concept of a community bible group. It wasn't me trying to get strangers to show up and hear me preach. It was the idea of developing a community of people together in a non-threatening environment where we could help disciple and mentor one another collectively.
It's been an interesting and revealing month since we began meeting together.
I have immediately been made aware of the spiritual weight involved in leading a community. It's sobering to understand what I bring to the community will either bring life or death to the individual.
While preparing and thinking through what we'll learn together when we meet, I've been forced to reach deep within my own heart and bring to the surface things that cause momentary discomfort. I'm sharing with the group and discussing some of the darker times in my life. Why would I share such revealing secrets to people I've really only known for a few weeks? Because it's important to open ourselves up. It's important to take risks with each other. When we become mannequins inhabiting space together we never change. The personal growth process means we take risks emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. Sometimes those risks back fire and we get hurt, and sometimes they pay off. Either way we grow.
I'm learning that personal healing and growth comes from reaching inside on a continual basis and presenting the community with my heart, however dark parts of it may be.
I'm also realizing that the worst thing I could ever do, the one thing that would destroy any hope for deep, real, and meaningful community would be to fake who I really am.
When I try to hide who I really am as a person, I destroy the community as a whole.
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