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Vital Christian communities are formed only through centering on Christ (through spiritual renewal). In chapter two, we stated the goal of pastoral work as building Christian communities. Communities were simply defined as a type of environment. In chapter three, we considered some different ways in which environments could be structured. We sketched the kind of social grouping that is needed if Christianity is going to be able to survive in the modern world - the basic Christian community. The word "community" in this sense means an environment that is voluntary (that is, not just a societal grouping) and one which has a formal structure. Now, we have to pay some attention to that which draws the community together, that which gives it unity. A voluntary grouping within society can exist only if it has a source of unity, that is, a purpose or ideal. The question of the purpose of a community is even more important than the question of the structure of a community because, without a purpose, there is no need to have a structure. What occupies the forefront in most people's minds when considering the current changes in the Church are the conflicts between liberals and conservatives (not to mention radicals and reactionaries). These conflicts often center on issues of authority and institutional change, and therefore, it is not strange that people use political terms to define the main positions. The conflicts that have occupied the forefront in Church discussions in recent years have been, in many ways, an expression of a political controversy in Church life - how the body politic of the Church is to be organized and governed. But the most important issue facing the Church today is not the political one. It is the question of whether the Church should exist at all. Or, to phrase the question in the terms we have been using, it is the question, why form Christian communities rather than just improve the various natural communities we are in, working together with men who do not accept Christ? Why go to all the trouble to form a special environment? Why have a special grouping at all? Or, to phrase the question a little bit more cuttingly, why should Christianity exist at all? This question enables us to consider a very fundamental area for the vitality of any Christian community and of the Church as a whole - its purpose. Considering the purpose of the Christian community inevitably leads us to consider questions of spiritual renewal. If we ask what purpose a Christian community has to justify its special existence, we have to deal with Christ and the spiritual life, because this is the area of its special purpose. Approaching the importance of Christ from this point of view, we will be able to see how spiritual renewal has a functional importance, a practical importance, in the life of the Church. Spiritual renewal is not just something that is "higher value," and does not really enter into the building up of the Church. Many times people can concede that spiritual renewal is important for Christians today, in fact, of primary importance, and yet still not see how spiritual renewal ties into the way the Church functions. They are faced with a number of problems: structural ones of the kind we have been discussing, problems of declining numbers of priests, financial problems, attendance problems. And they instinctively look for a specific solution to the specific problem (a structural solution to a structural problem, a financial solution to a financial problem, etc.). They can accept the fact that spiritual renewal is important. But they cannot see how it has direct application to the specific problems which are clamoring for attention. And so they naturally try to deal with the pressuring problems first and do not get around to turning their attention to the problem of spiritual renewal. To understand how spiritual renewal is a practical step in the renewal of the Church, and to see how vital Christian communities can be formed only through centering on Christ, it is necessary to understand: 1) the relationship of the vitality of a community to the dedication to its purpose, 2) the importance of the unique purpose of Christianity to the vitality of the Church, and 3) the way in which the renewal of vitality can come. THE VITALITY OF A COMMUNITY When a community has vitality, it can do a great deal. For one thing, it is very active. Often, we contrast a dead parish with one that is alive. The difference between the two lies in the fact that a parish which is alive has a great deal of activity connected with it. But there are other signs of vitality than activity. Growth is one. A community which is alive, grows. People want to get "where the action is." Another sign of vitality is the effectiveness of activities. When a community or movement or organization is alive, it has an effect on its surroundings and a great impact on the lives of the people who make it up. In one Mexican village, the Catholic Church has many more activities going on than the Communist Party. Yet the Communist Party is running the town and the members of the Communist Party are noted for being more dedicated men. The Communist Party has a much greater vitality in that village. A community has vitality when it has more resources going into its life and when those resources are well used. A community begins to come alive when its members put a great deal of their time, energy and money into it. When they do not, it is dead. Many Catholic parishes get only a minimal contribution from most of the parishioners. They come one hour a week, give a dollar or two a week, and hardly expend a thought or a concern on the life of the parish. Their lives are little affected by the fact that they belong to the parish, and the life of the parish is little strengthened by their membership. This is why, groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, even though they are much smaller than the Catholic Church, are much more alive. When a community is weak or dying, every problem within the community seems insoluble. That is because there is not enough strength, not enough resources in the community to work on the problems. Even if there is enough understanding, problems are still insoluble. But, if a community is strong and alive, there does not seem to be any problem which is not a source of greater growth and strength and which cannot be handled. It is just like the human person. If someone is weak and run-down, he cannot handle a disease when he is hit. People with less vitality die more quickly. But if he is strong and healthy, he can come through the disease when he is hit. People with less vitality die more quickly. But if he is strong and healthy, he can come through the disease or injury with much more ease. Many of the problems facing the Church seem insoluble, not because no solutions can be thought up for problems, but because of the overall lack of vitality and dedication in the Church. What is needed is not primarily better solutions, but a renewal in the life of the Church. The problem of the decline in vocations is a good example. Fewer and fewer people want to become priests. It may be true that better methods of recruiting or more desirable working conditions will be a help in this problem (specific solutions to the specific problem). But an even more fundamental cause is that Catholics are putting less and less of their lives in religion. It does not mean that much to them. The vocations' problem is much more a problem of the whole life of the Church and the dedication of its members than simply a special structural problem that can be worked out by a specific solution. There are many factors which go into the vitality of a community. Having a good structure, for instance, is certainly one of these factors. A bad structure can inhibit life; while a good structure can make life possible. A community can have all the resources in the world available to it, and if it cannot use them well, they will not produce much life. An Australian bushman can be much stronger than a senile American. But if the American knows how to use tools better than the bushman, he will be able to be a lot more effective with the strength he has than the bushman will be. In the same way, a good structure to a community will allow the resources that are there to result in a great deal more vitality, while a bad structure may stifle it. Many promising young communities die because the leaders do not have the understanding to know how to deal with the structural readjustments that need to come with growth. Although there are many factors which go into making a community vital, the most direct source of vitality is purpose and the commitment of the members to that purpose. If a community has a purpose that is clear and compelling, one that seems to be of real importance, and if its members are committed to that purpose and therefore put as many of their resources as possible into fostering that purpose, the community will be a vital community. If the community has no purpose, it will not last, no matter how well-structured it is. The most stable social groupings we know are held together by a very compelling purpose - survival. Human beings instinctively feel the need to stay alive: to eat, to find shelter, to have protection. They instinctively realize that this happens only in social groupings, and so they have formed tribes, cities, nations. Such social groupings have had a strong hold on those who have been part of them, because they have known that they could not live unless they were a part of such societies. There have been other foundations for strong communities in our experience. The Communist Party, for instance, has formed a strong worldwide community (a highly organized community). Its vitality and resilience has, in great part, come from the commitment on the part of its members to the proletarian revolution and to all that is involved in that ideal. The members of the Communist Party have been willing to make great sacrifices of personal interest in order to further the cause. Great causes have mobilized many strong social movements. A strong, common purpose can result in very effective action. Lack of agreement or consensus can paralyze a group. A political party, for instance, can be much more effective if it has an issue - a strong cause that it can unite around. Dissension over its purposes and directions often is the direct cause of losing many elections. We can see the same things in the current Church renewal. Many organizations and movements which were strong before Vatican II, all of a sudden lost direction and therefore effectiveness as a result of the lack of consensus produced by the renewal. The Cursillo movement would be a good example. In Mexico, the Cursillo movement maintained a clear grasp of a unique purpose and a commitment to it, and it became a strong force in the life of the Church in that country. In the United States, after the Vatican Council, every group with an idea made use of the Cursillo movement. And as a result, after a strong beginning, the movement lost direction and effectiveness. Recently, there seems to be a reversal of that trend and some renewal in the life of the Cursillo movement in the United States. There is, of course, a difference between the kind of purpose a community has and the kind an institution or an organization has. An institution or an organization has a particular goal or set of goals. The goal may be to make some product or service available. An automotive company has the goal of selling cars. The telephone company has the goal of making telephone communication available. Or the goal may be to effect a change in society. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has the goal of changing the attitudes of Americans toward animals. The people who work within institutions or organizations, whether members or employees, are organized to work together to reach the goals of their particular institutions. The more clearly their interaction together is directed toward reaching the goals of the institution, the stronger and more effective the institution will be. A defining characteristic of the social grouping, called an institution, is that the people in it work together (function in interdependence) either to produce something or effect some kind of change in the world. A community has a different kind of purpose. Its members do not work together as a community to produce something or to effect a change in society. But in a real community (a group of people with unity), the members do have a common purpose in the sense of a common ideal. They all live for something. A community fosters something in its common ideal. The members of the community do not work together, as a community, to achieve a particular goal or set of goals. But the fact that the community holds the same ideal means that the members of the community strengthen in each other the commitment to a certain ideal of life, and this ideal forms the lives of each of the members. In other words, the members of the community do not work together (except to build up the community). But they do share a common ideal, and so their lives have a common effect. The contrast between the peace movement and a peace organization in a particular city makes the difference between the purpose of a community and the purpose of an institution more concrete. The peace movement includes many more people than all the peace organizations put together in this particular city. People belong to the peace movement because of certain convictions. They accept certain values, have certain interests, and are trying to put their lives in the service of peace. They may come to certain lectures, take part in demonstrations, sign petitions. But people can do this and not belong to a peace organization. Peace is an ideal in their lives; it determines many of their actions. But unless they also join a peace organization, they do not work together with others for certain concrete goals like getting a change in a draft law. For a peace organization to exist, the concrete goals must be agreed upon. For the peace movement to exist, each person can have different goals he is working hard on. But there must be a common ideal that molds their common life and interaction. There is, then, a difference between the kind of purpose which a community has and that which an organization or institution has. An organization has a common task toward which work of the members is directed. A community has an ideal of life - it fosters an ideal among its members. It is that ideal that draws them together. But even though the kind of purpose which a community has is different from the kind an organization has, it is no less important for a community to have an ideal than it is for an organization to have a task. In fact, it is more important that the purpose be kept clear and the commitment of the members be kept strong in a community than in an organization, because a person can often be an effectively functioning part of an organization without much of a commitment to the purpose just as long as he is paid. But the life and vitality of the community depend on the free acceptance of the members of the purpose of the community. In the modern world, the one ideal which everyone can accept is material well-being. Therefore, it is this ideal around which society forms. Nothing is allowed which damages or works against the material well-being of society. A person can convince another person of a falsehood, but he cannot rob him of his material possessions without punishment. But, if a special community wants to exist within modern society, it must have an ideal of its own that is important enough to warrant people forming a special community within society. It takes some effort to form a special community in the kind of society we have. Therefore, an ideal is needed which can motivate people to such an effort. Once we can see the importance of a purpose, an ideal of life, for any community in modern society, then it makes more sense that the Christian community will be vital only if it has a purpose, a reason for existence, and one that its members put a high degree of value on, one that they are committed to. That which is unique about Christianity, its reason for existence, has to be important enough to people that they would want to invest time in Christian communities, or Christian communities will have no vitality and eventually cease to exist. THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRISTIANITY The question, why should Christianity exist at all, can be reworded. What is unique about Christianity and what is so important about what is unique about Christianity? From this perspective, what Christianity is becomes a vital question facing the Church. It is not merely an academic question. The question is even more important in view of the present situation of the Church. Christians have to live most, if not all, of their lives in the middle of environments which are not Christian. There is a strong pull from any environment we are in that draws us to become just like the others in that environment. Christians are tempted to become like the people they live with. The question is then, whether there is anything wrong with that, or whether Christianity has something unique about it, something that makes it worthwhile for men to bother being Christians and belonging to Christian communities. What then is Christianity? Some common answers are: It is being good (just, charitable, moral), loving others, or having social concern. But a person does not have to be Christian to be good or to love others or to have social concern. Many non-Christians do this. If this is all that Christianity is, there is nothing unique about it to distinguish it from simple humanism. The answer does not lie in principles or values, but rather in a person - Jesus Christ. He is what is unique about Christianity. If it is not important to believe in him and follow him, then Christianity is not important. If what he did, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are not important for men to believe in and accept, then Christianity is not important. A historian once said that when a world religion loses its missionary zeal, that is a sign it is beginning to die. He went on to explain that when the members of a religion no longer feel it important for others to believe in that religion, then they no longer feel it is that important to themselves either. It is no longer considered important enough to justify the special effort to bring it to others. Soon it will no longer be considered important enough to justify a special effort in the person's own life. The term "important" indicates what we are concerned with. If something is important, it is worth time, effort and interest. If it is more important than something else, it is worth more time, effort, and interest than something else. It has priority. The fact that toothpaste cuts tooth decay may be as true as that Jesus is the Son of God. But it is not necessarily as important just because it is as true. When tooth brushing occupies as large a place in a Christian's life as Jesus Christ, there is something wrong with that person's Christianity. If Jesus Christ is what is unique about Christianity, then the purpose of a Christian community is to live for Christ. Therefore, how alive a Christian community will be depends on how important Jesus Christ is to the members of that community. It is rare that a Christian will say straight out that Christ is not important. But many Christians say things that amount to saying that Christ is not important. And that is the source of much of the weakness of Christianity today. One way of saying that Christ is not important is to define Christianity in a way that does not mention Christ. As was mentioned above, it is very common (if not usual) to hear people define Christianity as "loving others" or something of the sort. Or, it is common for them to say that what it is to be a Christian is to be a person who is concerned for others. It is rarer for people to define Christianity in a way that includes the name of Christ. If Christianity can be defined in a way that does not include Christ, then he is not essential. It is a way of playing down the importance of what is unique about Christianity - Christ himself. A similar way of making Christ less important is to re-interpret certain Christian words. For instance, traditionally, the term "faith" meant belief in Christ or acceptance of Christ. "People of God" referred to the members of the Church. It is common today to define faith as, perhaps, "ultimate concern." And it is common today to say that the people of God is "all men." It is true, anyone can define any word the way he wants (There is no law against it, nor can a person be condemned as a heretic on those grounds alone). But when the basic Christian words are defined in a way that does not involve any reference to Christ, then by implication, a person is saying that people can have faith (which is important) without having any belief in Christ, or that there is nothing special about belonging to the community of believers in Christ (the Church) since the people of God (which are the people most important to God) are "all men," even if they do not believe in Christ. Re-interpreting concepts is a way of playing down the importance of Christ. Perhaps the most dangerous form of re-interpreting Christian concepts is re-interpreting the name of Christ himself. The name of Christ is applied to "others" or to "all men." "To see Christ in others" or "to serve Christ in my brother" becomes a way of substituting a concern for other men for a concern for the Lord himself. Often, people do not seem to know who Christ is. They do not know him as a person in himself - only as a symbol for mankind. Or they see him as a model, as a great teacher, as "the man for others," as the symbol of all that is good. They do not recognize him as the Son of God, the Lord, the Savior, the one to whom they have to come to for life. If Christ is not unique among men, if he is not "the way, the truth and the life" through whom all must go if they are to come to the Father, Christianity is not that important. If all Christ is is a great teacher, an example of a great man, a symbol for mankind or for all that is good in men, Christianity itself is not that important. There is nothing unique about it. What it contains is only what is available in different forms. To re-interpret Christ, or even to teach about Christ in a way that does not bring out his uniqueness as Lord and Savior, is to drain Christianity of all its vitality. Another way to make Christ less important is to stress certain theological truths rather than others. For instance, the truths that "all men can be saved" and that "we are saved through believing in Christ" are both Catholic teachings. In a real sense, they go together. But often, people will stress that all men can be saved by living a good life and not that men are saved by Christ. The obvious implication of this kind of stress is that Christ is not as important as living a good life. How the two statements are related is a complicated theological issue. But the implication of stressing that all men can be saved by living a good life is direct and simple. It implies that Christ is not really all that important. There are a number of theological truths which receive a great deal of stress today (like the primacy of conscience rather than the duty to believe in Christ; and the value of all the great world religions as revelations of God rather than Christianity as God's plan for man's salvation). The result is not that error is propagated (These are truths, after all), but that something other than Christ is being stressed as important. Another way Christ is made less important is by describing the Christian life mainly as relating to other people rather than relating to Christ. It is a common thing for people to describe Christian living more in terms of loving one's neighbor or following principles of social justice, or fulfilling the duties of one's station in life than in terms of living for Christ, dedication to Christ, prayer, bringing others to know Christ. It is not that such people would say that Christ is not a part of a Christian's life. It is, rather, that they do not usually describe the Christian life in a way in which he is seen as important. There are many other examples which illustrate the trend to de-emphasize Christ. But one is of particular importance for what we are considering - the tendency to identify more with society as a whole or with some segment of society rather than with the Church. Will Herberg in his bookProtestant, Catholic, Jew tells about how he gave talks to Catholic schools and would ask the students, "Are you a Catholic American or an American Catholic?" They would almost always answer "a Catholic American," revealing that they consider themselves Americans first and Catholics second. There is a tendency now for men's primary identification to change from their nation to mankind as a whole (The change has not yet occurred, but it seems in progress). This is happening among Christians, too, and large numbers of them are considering themselves first of all members of the world (of mankind) rather than their nation. This does not, however, change the situation that Christians do not identify themselves primarily as Christians. The question of what group a person identifies with first is an indication of what he thinks is the most important. If a person makes his primary identification as a man, he is saying that the things he shares with other men (the desire to survive, perhaps a common human decency) are more important than the things he shares with Christians (Jesus Christ). And, by implication, he is saying that he is not willing to work as hard for Christ (the ideal he holds in common with other Christians) as for the material peace and prosperity of mankind (the ideal he holds in common with all men). It is true, there is no necessary opposition between the good of mankind and Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary. Nor is there any opposition between being a Christian and being a man or an American. Nor is there any opposition between social concern and Christianity. Again, quite the contrary. But that is not the point. The point is: What will a Christian put his heart into? What will he be dedicated to? If Christianity is to survive and grow in the world; if Christian communities are to be vital and increase, Christians must consider Christ the most important reality in all human life. Instead, we see something different. We see the Church disintegrating in a certain sense. Groups within the Church are forming community more readily with non-Christians who hold the same values than they do with Christians. It is common to see Catholics feeling closer to some non-Catholics because they are against the war in Vietnam or against Communism than they do to other Catholics because they are Christians. They feel more identification with other members of the anti-Communist crusade than they do with other members of the Body of Christ. They begin to feel less like members of the Church with a special concern and more like members of a party, part of whose life is spent within the hostile institution of the Church or in the inert mass of Christians. Jesus Christ is less of a cohesive force in the Church than different political positions or social values are disintegrating forces. Another thing we see is people directing their energies away from the specifically Christian. It is common for someone to consider working in the Peace Corps much more readily than working for the missions. It is common for priests and nuns to want to be social workers and psychological counsels (whether they stay in the priesthood and sisterhood or leave) rather than pastors, catechists, and preachers of the gospel. It is common for Christians to consider Christian service exclusively in terms of social action. Evangelism, the service of bringing men to a knowledge of Christ, is not even mentioned. The primary question which is put to the Church today is, where is your heart? What is most important to you? Where is your treasure? The question is, how much value do you put on what is unique to Christianity, Jesus Christ himself? Or, to rephrase, how much importance do you place on forming a community in which life is formed around Christ, in which you will be helped to make Christ the first thing in your life? This is the issue which will decide the future of the Church. RENEWAL OF CHRISTIAN LIFE If the vitality of a community depends upon the community having a purpose and the members being committed to that purpose; and if the unique purpose of a Christian community, the purpose that distinguishes it from every other community is its relationship to Christ, then, for any real renewal of the Church to take place, the renewal of men's commitment to Christ to take place, the renewal of men's commitment to Christ and knowledge of him is of first priority. Any renewal, in other words, which is not, first of all, a religious renewal, will not renew the life of the Church. This assertion indicates some features that have to be part of any program of overall change in the Church. First of all, there has to be a renewal in what the New Testament calls "preaching and teaching," or what is today more commonly called "religious education." Central to Christianity is "the service of the word" - communicating to people about Christ and the Christian life. Unless this is done effectively, there cannot be a real Christian community. There has, it is true, been a real renewal in religious education in the American Church. No longer do children memorize propositions from Scholastic theology (at least, in most places). But the renewal in religious education has not led to a deeper religious life among Catholics, even though it probably has taken away some of the sources of hostility people had to the old form of Catholicism. One reason the renewal in religious education has not been as effective as it might have been is a lack of appreciation of the importance of conversion in the Christian life. Education in the Church has frequently been approached as if it were primarily a matter of getting people to accept certain values or principles and sometimes as if it were a matter of acquiring certain information. But, a person cannot live as a Christian unless he has made his relationship with Christ the most important thing in his life, that which governs all the rest. In other words, central to education as a Christian are a person's purposes. He must not only accept certain values and acquire some information, he must progressively change his purpose in life so that more and more his concern is to know Christ, to live for him, and to change his life in accordance with what Christ wants. He must make following Christ his only purpose. This is what makes a Christian community alive. Realizing the importance of conversion has many implications for the life of the Church. First of all, it means a renewal of evangelism in the life of the Church. "Evangelism" means announcing the good news - telling people about Christ and about his death and resurrection in a way they can realize that they are being invited by God to turn to Christ (convert), change what they are living for (repent), and enter into a relationship with Christ (be baptized). Evangelism is often taken for granted in the Church today. Much of religious education is predicated upon the presupposition that the members of the Church have already made a commitment to Christ, even though the kerygmatic school of catechetics has warned that it is fatal to ignore people's basic lack of commitment to Christ. There has to be a renewal in methods of evangelism. Many religious educators realize the need for evangelization in the Church, but often, they do not know how to go about it. They are ready to settle for a process of pre-evangelization that may last for years and never be successful. Yet there are many successful means to drawing people to a commitment to Christ that involves knowing how to shape the message, how to make use of a personal witness, and how to take the concrete steps a person has to take to renew his life. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Bahais, many of the smaller Protestant sects, dozens of groups in American life know how to preach their own type of life successfully, and much can be learned from them. There also has to be a renewal in Christian instruction for those who want to live as Christians. Part of this involves a way of bringing new people into the Christian community. The life of the community will suffer if an adequate foundation has not been laid in the lives of those who become part of the community. A sound catechumenate, an initiation process, is needed. There has to be, in addition, a be solid instruction in an on-going way for those who are already part of the community. The heart of both the initiation process and the on-going instruction has to be constantly recalling people to a renewed commitment to the Lord, constantly strengthening the foundations of the Christian life. It is never possible to take the basics for granted. But even more important than the actual methods of evangelism and instruction should be the context. In the early Church, and in many Christian groups today, evangelism is the invitation to join the life of a community which holds to the message and is living it. A person is drawn to the community, sees what the message means in daily life, and finds himself attracted by an environment that has more vitality than those he has been in before because it has a strong commitment to a purpose. Even if a Catholic heard a well-preached message in church or in school, he would be unlikely to respond, because his experience (the Christian environment he lives in) has nothing to correspond to the message. It is almost always the case that when evangelism and instruction are done successfully, both in the Church and outside of it, they are done in the context of a community that is alive, and they are done as a means of inviting people into the life of that community or growing in the life of that community. Speaking about Christianity is successful only when it is the clarification of people's experiences of the Christian life. Along with a renewal in evangelism and instruction, therefore, there needs to be a spiritual renewal in the Church. This renewal has to involve a commitment to Christ, a changing of direction in life, that is true. But it also has to involve a deeper knowledge of God. Christianity is not mainly concerned with an ideal, a value or a principle, but with a person, a person who can be known. Someone does not become a strong Christian primarily because he sees a way of life which works, but because he comes to know a person, his Creator and Savior. Much of the reason people do not understand the importance of Christ today is that they do not know him. They do not experience his reality, and so they do not experience the difference he can make to a human life. Many communities are based upon being committed to an ideology or a doctrine or set of values. The peace movement forms around certain values; the Communist Party around an ideology; the Bahai around doctrines. But there is a difference in Christianity which should provide even more vitality than any other community might have. There is a power to Christianity - the power of resurrection, the power of the Holy Spirit. When God is present and at work, there is a life and an effectiveness that cannot be had by mere human means. If men really believe in Christ, they also believe that he is present and at work by his Spirit. Therefore, the spiritual renewal in Christianity must involve knowing how to realize the power in Christianity, knowing how to receive the Spirit and yield to his working, so that through the Holy Spirit in them, the members of the Christian community can do more than they would be able to do as ordinary human beings. The spiritual life of a Christian community, then, is not merely a luxury. It is the very center of the Christian community. The vitality of the Christian community depends upon the in-dwelling presence of the Holy Spirit who can give new life to individual Christians and to Christian communities and who can work through individual Christians in charismatic power to build up the Christian community. The very purpose of the Christian life is the knowledge of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. And if this is missing, a Christian community has no purpose and cannot stay alive. The importance of the unique purpose of Christianity also has implications for leadership in the Christian community. When it was said that the basic pastoral problem of the Church today is how to build communities which make it possible for a person to live a Christian life, it might have been possible to think that what the Church most needed was sociologists or community organizers. But this is not at all true. What the Church needs most is men of God, men who can and will function as pastors, evangelists, spiritual directors. The Church needs men of God for a very sociological reason: Communities are not formed primarily by sociologists and community organizers. They are formed by leaders of men who are dedicated to something. Sociologists and community organizers can help a great deal to facilitate the organization of communities. But they cannot be substitutes for lack of purpose and direction. They do not provide direction. This is another way of putting the main point of this chapter. Communities are not formed by focussing attention on forming communities. Nor are they formed by trying to draw dedication to the community itself. They are a by-product, so to speak. They form, as a result of dedication, to something which is shared. Therefore, the person who is most equipped to form a community is not the person who is an expert in the process of community, but the person who is dedicated to an ideal and who can lead men to it. The Church needs men of God, then, men who are committed to Christ above all and who are willing to work to bring others to a commitment to him. They must be spiritual men, who know God, and who can lead others to him. They must be men who are filled by the Spirit; and who are led by the Spirit, men who can work for Christ in the power of the Spirit. At many points in this section, it was necessary to emphasize that the purpose of Christianity is not loving others or dealing with social problems or community development or anything but Christ. The point is not to play down the importance of these things, but to make apparent the importance of Christ in the process of building Christian community. All these things are involved in Christianity. But if it is important that the beams of a house be placed correctly, it is even more important that the foundation be built well. First things first. The foundation of a Christian community is Jesus Christ. If a Christian community is going to survive, it must have a reason to exist. Its reason to exist is Christ. He is more important to it than anything else. He is the source of its life. Unless there is a spiritual conversion in the Church, a turning to Christ and an acceptance of him as more important than anything else, a spiritual renewal in the Church, a deeper knowledge of God and a deeper understanding of how to receive the power of the Spirit, is fruitless to consider in building Christian communities. |
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Building Christian Community - Strategy for Renewing the Church by Stephen B. Clark. ©Stephen B. Clark 1996 All Rights reserved. |
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