Chapter 5 of Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Gibbs and Bolger) is entitled ‘Living as Community’.

On one occasion, after spending hours with her at the Living Room, the church’s cafe, a guest asked Karen Ward, When is your church service?”

“You just had it,” replied Ward.

Challenging Individualism

Looking back to the outset of modernity…humans were on their own, and they needed to protect what was theirs.  Personal property rights ensued and created the modern individual.  A new understanding arose that gave every person unlimited sovereignty over his or her individual person.  Philosophically, all people could be sure of was their internal being.  Because material and immaterial reality were no longer connected, people could no longer sure of their observations.  All connections with others became “extra” and discretionary rather than undertood as essential to being human.  Even religion became a universal condition that one could objectify and describe, and therefore, people could make an individual decision as to whether to accept or disregard it.  Individualism, currently at its zenith, had its birth at the very outset of modernity.  (Gibbs & Bolger)

Journey, not Destination

For Water’s Edge, the church is not a safe haven for people who have “arrived” but a meeting point for those on the journey of faith.  (Gibbs & Bolger)

The Challenge of Creating Community

Creating a vital community is a challenge in our current cultural context.  People are both hungry for relationships and yet at the same time ill prepared for the costs involved.  In a culture in which casual relationships or contractual relationships are the norm, it is difficult to build relationships on deep foundations that can survive disagreements and disappointments.  People are more prone to walk away when the boing becomes difficult than to work through a crisis to the point where a new depth of understanding is reached.  (Gibbs & Bolger)

Church as Family

We wanted the church to become a family, God’s family.  We needed to structure church as a family, not a rock show, or a business, or a convention, or a university.  (Joe Boyd)

Household, not Temple

The modern church has identified too closely with the centralised temple worship of the Jerusalem church rather than with the household basis of the Pauline model of church.  The household was not simply a domestic unit in the first century.  It was the basic socioeconomic unit in a preindustrial society in which so much of life depended on patronage.  The household included, in addition to the extended family, salves, the clientele who regularly traded with the family, and friends of the family.  In light of this background, a first-century Christian would have been puzzled by the question, “Where do yo go to church?” for church was a network of people to which one belonged.  It was not a once-or-twice-a-week association but rather a community of continuous interaction that included a range of activities related to every aspect of life.  The community supplied a circle of people who provided both identity and security.  (Gibbs & Bolger)

Water’s Edge recently printed T-shirts that on the front say, “Don’t Go to Church,” and on the back say, “Be the Church.” (Joel McClure)

A Place of Mutual Accountability

We’re moving toward membership of Revive having nothing to do with attending a particular meeting.  Instead, it’s about beig accountable (through a small group, prayer triplet, soul friend, spiritual director, etc.) to five basic values of discipleship.  (Simon Hall)

Relational, not Propositional, Evangelism

We don’t really feel as though the gospel can be packaged into a proposition that is dispensed in slick programs or presentations.  So evangelism happens naturally as we introduce people into the community.  (Brad Cecil)

‘Nonchurched people can pick up the gospel from us as we form relationships, a sthe gospel is a holy virus that is spread from person to person (the most effective means of transmitting anything).  We are the carriers of Christ.  In our very bodies, we are carrying out the life, death, and resurrection of Christ both in and for our world.  (Karen Ward)