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PERSONAL OPINION
Community

John H. Redekop

Christianity includes community. The biblical writers repeatedly emphasize that fact, using images of the family (Ephesians 3:15), the body (Colossians 1:18) and the household (Galatians 6:10). Mature Christian living involves having close relationships with fellow believers. Common interests and significant communication serve as a foundation for sharing, helping and deep friendship. In a Christian community, whether it involves an entire congregation or a subgroup within a large church, the fundamental quality is love, a love which reflects the other-oriented love of Christ.

As a child growing up in southern Saskatchewan, I observed Christian community in action. In those days, the largely self-taught preachers didn’t talk much about community, but they and their congregations practised it. At harvest time, when crops needed to be cut, stooked and threshed, families helped one another. On hog-butchering days, neighbours worked together, cheerfully, side by side.

I do not recall hearing talk about charity, but I clearly saw its practice. When crop failure hit some families hard, the other members of the community contributed generously from their own meagre resources. When a husband and father suddenly became ill and could not seed the fields, a half-dozen tractors with drills appeared almost mysteriously on the horizon and completed the job. These helpers never even came to the house to identify themselves during a coffee break. (Actually, they did not have time to take a coffee break.) When fire levelled a home, the other members of the community quickly provided what one might call “community insurance”. Everyone gave what he could. And when a young child was accidentally electrocuted after touching an overly-charged barbed wire fence, the entire community grieved, helped and walked alongside.

Community also expressed itself in celebration. In those days, there was no need to send out wedding invitations, at least not to members of one’s church community. The entire community participated in the joyous celebration. Major birthdays for seniors, milestone wedding anniversaries, homecomings and the arrival or departure of a family were other times when relationships were nurtured. In the Christian community where I lived, participation rates were high.

Times have changed. During the last several decades, it seems to me, much of this strong sense of community has been lost, at least in certain regions. Assumed interest, broad participation and deep bonds of love have, in many instances, gradually been replaced by indifference, advertising campaigns to boost ticket sales and a detached, consumer mindset: “I’ll go if there’s something in it for me.” Authentic Christian community, of course, cannot thrive in a climate in which self-interest is considered the greatest good.

Perhaps the Christian community of my childhood experiences was particularly impressive because it grew out of the rich soil of a common Mennonite ethno-religious identity. The shared memory of an earlier golden age in Russia; the widespread suffering and persecution endured during the Russian Revolution; and the common experiences of a generally poor immigrant group speaking a minority language helped shape the community. But what I experienced was more than just a minority cultural group looking after its own. It was also authentic Christianity in action.

Whatever the significance of ethnic glue may have been in those pioneer days, the challenge in our time is clear. Whether or not many of us share a common ethnic identity, can we recapture the deep sense of community which earlier generations achieved? Can we regain a perspective in which our church, or an appropriate subgroup in a large congregation, is a body of which each person is a vital part? Can we be a community in which deep, other-oriented relationships give profound meaning to life?

We call ourselves the Mennonite Brethren Conference. While in our day some see “Brethren” as an exclusive term, its original meaning was precisely the opposite. In January 1860, the founders of our group called themselves “brethren” because they sought to be true to the biblical teaching that believers are family. They understood the church not to be a congregation of hearers or an assembly united only by common relationships to God; rather, they saw the church as a body under the headship of Christ, an organic, interconnected whole.

All believers belong to some ethnic group, and Christian truth is always experienced in a particular cultural situation. But such ethnic realities must not be exclusivist, and they must always be secondary to our fundamental commonality in Christ.

In North America today, Mennonite Brethren no longer constitute a single ethno-religious group. Nevertheless, we are the fortunate heirs of a great biblical tradition nurtured by Mennonite Brethren for more than a century. With much of our ethnic glue now gone, we face a great challenge and an exciting opportunity. Can we, whether in small congregations or large, achieve the kind of Christian community which God wants us to enjoy? Can we overcome the corrosive effects of individualism, socioeconomic diversity, geographic dispersion, vocational dispersion, middle-class self-sufficiency and affluence? Can we experience authentic, God-ordained community without ethnicity as glue? That is the challenge.

I see instances of amazing success – and that makes me optimistic.

John H. Redekop is on the faculty of Trinity Western University and is a member of Bakerview MB Church in Abbotsford, B.C.

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Last modified May 4, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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