Over this past week, while on vacation, I put out a few tweets on Twitter that draw more attention than usual. A few people messaged me, asking me to explain in more detail what I meant. While I won’t go into too much detail, I’ll try to shed some light. The comments are largely on the topic of community that I teach fairly regularly. Again, this just brushes the surface on a topic I am deeply passionate about.
“True community is found when we explore the right questions, not when we rally around required facts. This isn’t a denial of absolute truth.”
So much discussion has gone on around propositional beliefs, absolute truth and relativism. This statement is not meant to be epistemological. Rather, I believe that what generally brings us together as a community has less to do with what we are sure about than what we are seeking to understand. Again, this does not suggest that the answers are not important and don’t bind us. It is about the risk we face in ignoring those shared uncertainties out of some misguided belief that uniformity is the same as unity.
“Leaders should create space, raise the question and facilitate conversation. Out of this service, community is nurtured.”
Again, this is a topic that needs more attention than I am going to give it here. However, my point here is that the role of leadership is less about using power to control or decide, but rather to serve others in the process of becoming the community they are meant to be. We need not abandon leadership, but focus on its more servant-focused function.
“We must check our impulse to comfort, answer or fix. Often it is motivated by our own discomfort, not love or compassion.”
This does not suggest that there is not a time for comfort, answers or correction. Rather, it is about learning the discipline of examining our true motivation. So often we choose to act in these ways to relieve our own discomfort. So often I have seen good people comforting a hurting person without making any effort to understand their suffering. We need to learn to be present with people in their suffering.
“The threat to true community is not difference of belief or even conflict. It is shallow, lip-service commitment.”
True community is a born out of embracing the cross of Christ, dying to self, being reborn together as one Body. When it comes what it really takes to become community- the sacrifice, the vulnerability, the giving up of rights, etc.- most of us would rather talk about it than walk it out. I sometimes wonder if we spend so much time on arguing peripheral details in order to avoid the real challenges.
I hope that clears things up. To follow me on Twitter, check out the Twitter feed on my sidebar.
