What is Community? What is the Church? What is Yours?

I’m at the Annual Conference for the Great Plains Conference of the United Methodist Church this weekend. Annual Conference is when all the pastors and one laity from each church in all of Kansas and Nebraska come together to meet, do the business of the Conference, and be in community with one another. This is my first Annual Conference and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how lovely it has been to be together with my peers in this way.

This year the Conference is in Kearney, Nebraska. I’ve never been this far west in Nebraska, and it was about a six-hour drive from my house. A friend and I drove up together and we engaged in what often happens on long road trips - we talked about everything. We talked about our families, our recent vacations, and how we could do a better job than those in charge (just in general - not of any one organization); we veered into discussing what church is. We talked about what community is.

My friend offered that they experienced church at the pool in their apartment complex. They knew that when they were seeking company, seeking to be part of an activity that they enjoyed, seeking to rest and have their heart filled - they could walk down to the pool in their apartment complex and find it. Whether they wanted to swim or not, they could show up with a book and sit alongside a neighbor who also wanted to sit and read in the same space as others. They could show up dressed for the occasion and find others who were there to exercise in swimming laps or lounge alongside the pool and soak up the warmth of the sun.

I appreciated the parallels to my experiences in my weekly church attendance. I can come needing to find rest and find others there seeking rest. There’s always someone with soul tiredness and those with physical tiredness - you can always find someone sleeping in church. I can come to church seeking encouragement and an opportunity to sing and pray with others. I can come to church ready to learn something new in the messages from God in scripture and in the examples of others.

My friend’s story sparked me to think of other places in my life where I find church outside the walls of a church building.

In 2 Corinthians 9:12-15, Paul writes to the church in Corinth on how Christians who gather for church should treat one another.

Carrying out this social relief work involves far more than helping meet the bare needs of poor Christians. It also produces abundant and bountiful thanksgiving to God. This relief offering is a prod to live at your very best, showing your gratitude to God by being openly obedient to the plain meaning of the Message of Christ. You show your gratitude through your generous offerings to your needy brothers and sisters, and really toward everyone. Meanwhile, moved by the extravagance of God in your lives, they’ll respond by praying for you in passionate intercession for whatever you need. Thank God for this gift, his gift. No language can praise it enough!

Paul paints an image of a group of people who always have enough because they share with one another freely and generously. They are blessed, not in a prosperity gospel that is transactional, but in a way that blesses their soul, not pocketbooks, through generosity. Just the act of giving is praise to God - praise that blesses the soul of the one who gives. I’m in a Facebook group called “Community Gifting” or “Buy Nothing.” The premise of this group is for neighbors, those in close physical proximity to one another to just share freely and without expectation with one another. Here are a few posts form the group:

Neighbors give away items and ask for items that they need. These gifts range from boats and lawnmowers to food that is getting ready to expire or leftover cake from a party. Requests have ranged from clothing or furniture for families who have lost homes in a fire or who are in an urgent domestic situation that leads them to need home furnishings quickly and without cost, even asking for someone who is willing to babysit while a parent works to requesting seeds for a pollinator garden or toys for a classroom. In this group, I’ve met many of my neighbors who are now friends. I have people who see me out and about and wave hi because we are more than random people from the internet. Last Christmas, a woman needed to finish her Christmas shopping but didn’t have a working vehicle. So I picked her up and we finished our shopping together. I was so blessed to have this time with her! It cost me nothing to share the passenger seat of my car.

The church that I see in this group reminds me of the practice of gleaning in the Hebrew bible as outlined in Leviticus 19:9-10

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

The ask and call is to just give the extra in the idea of gleaning - which is the same in my community gifting group.

My hope in writing this blog is to extend some of the work of the church to you. The church is a very human organization and is not and has never been the ideal for living that it has been called to be. In its humanity, the church has done harm. It has not lived or done what it is called to. It is not perfect. Far from it. Understanding this, I share my sermons here. I share with you prayers and liturgies that I share in the walls of my church - in the hope that you may also experience the blessings of community, even when your heart or time schedule can’t manage to be part of a church community. Please know that I pray for each of you often. I think of you as part of my ministry and work to faithfully show up in this space so you can count on having a community here.

This week, I invite you to think of the places where you find a church - outside of the church. I want to encourage you to invite a friend to share that space or practice with you. Share a prayer or blog post here, invite them to your community gifting, invite them to your apartment pool - maybe ask them to sit with you as you cheer on your child at softball. Invite a friend to ride along and run errands with you.

May we be the community the church is called to be.