A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart. (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Insight Ministries shaped how I thought about Christianity. IM was the collegiate discipleship ministry Daneille and I were a part of for the first six years of our marriage. Insight was essentially a charismatic version of the Navigators. We studied our Bibles, memorized scripture, shared our faith, held retreats, conducted Summer Training Programs, and worshipped together in small groups. The ministry was also like YWAM except it was equipping people to live as missionaries in our culture as opposed to foreign ones. Insight grew to include seven campuses in the U.S. and three in Europe. Around 1983 everyone returned to Tulsa to form Ahava Community Fellowship.

We had all just been married or were about to be. Kids were multiplying like rabbits. While people intentionally lived in the Tulsa mid-town area, we were continually moving, remodeling, and painting. We helped watch each other’s kids and repair each other’s cars and appliances. We shared many common goods, even money. Many of us came to think of our life together as a primary expression of worship. While our families and most church attenders saw us as cultish, we saw ourselves as a New Testament church.

We lived in the Ahava community for six formative years. We did not know how intertwined with these people we had become until we moved to Enid in 1991. Neither did we know how unique our experience was until, for the first time, we became a part of a traditional local church.

As we attempted to integrate into our new Enid church family, we were shocked at how private, independent and disconnected people were (at least by our standards). It felt as though we had moved from a family into an organization. Right or wrong, we had been ruined for church in the traditional sense of that word. Daneille and I had thought our Ahava DNA might be transferable. I felt as though my life depended upon it. I kicked hard against the organizational goad in an attempt to reestablish what we had lost. It was futile. People were kind and patient, but, to the eldership, I was a thorn in its side and was eventually censored. Censorship is a sign that its time to move on.

However, the strand had not been quickly torn apart. We participated in the traditional local church for 23 years. I was an elder most of that time. Since 2013, I have been living life as an untitled person, relating to others simply as a friend or as a potential friend. It seems I have been a much better representative of the kingdom of God as a friend than I ever was as an elder, worship leader, or teacher.

I learned the hard way that institutions don’t want reformed; they want conformity and perpetuation. And the things that perpetuate them tend to shape them into businesses with employees who have jobs as opposed to families who have members with lives to live out. Unfortunately, those called to model community as shepherds end up modeling corporate America as CEO’s. How can the person at the top of the pyramid model life together? 

Ultimately, whether we are in a traditional church or an organic community, our kingdom relevance will remain proportional to our relational intimacy with Christ and each other. Before the final chapter of the Church is written, we are going to need Christ in each other far more than we may currently grasp.

Father, as we see the day drawing near, teach us to abide in You and draw near to each other. May Your love give us the security to become authentic and available to each other. May we become the family to which all men hunger to belong. Amen.

 

 

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