Shared Life

THE CHARACTER OF COMMUNITY 

The word community has become one of those words people use indiscriminately to describe anything and everything with a subset. Often, people will set themselves up as a spokesperson for this “community” to the point where, if the truth be told, it’s really set up as a straw man to further one’s agenda rather than actually describe an existing group of people or their actual opinion. 

Instead, let me offer a description of what a real community looks like—and acts like. Inherent to the word community is another word: communion, which is to share something in common or to establish a commonality with another. Whenever we think of community, we think of a group that comes together for a similar cause or shares something in common that brings them together. 

So, what might a true community look like? Jesus’ words as He addresses His disciples in John 17 may give us an example. He boils it down to community best defined as one, not many. Listen to His words: “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. ... Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:10–11). 

Jesus built this amazing community of disciples over three years. He could have asked anything from His Father on their behalf, yet He only asks that they be one. 

There is something powerful about many becoming one. Now, where have you heard that statement before? On the back of US currency and coins, you’ll find the Latin motto for our country, E pluribus unum, which means “one from many.” The strength of the United States of America has always been one from many. It has succeeded because it followed a principle born in the heavens, where true community started in the form of the Trinity. 

In the language of heaven, one is not singular; one is plural. 

Do you think there is any coincidence that Jesus asks the thing that will truly make this ragtag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and sinners into a true community of believers, that they become one? He continues with another amazing statement: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one” (v. 20, emphasis mine). 

So, Jesus is praying for the extension of this community throughout time. Another aspect of community, then, is longevity. Community is designed to live beyond itself. It’s not just about me; it’s about me and everyone after me. Community must have some long-range vision for continuity.

So according to Jesus, a true community is best characterized by people who model oneness, love, joy, and friendship among themselves—a caring, other-centered, time-lasting, love-expressing group of people who would die for one another. 

Now, that’s a community anyone would opt in to be a part of. 

If you’re only part of an online community, where you are at arm’s length from everyone, and the only thing you may be one about is your political persuasion or product-driven engagement, then you might want to “unfriend” all that and become part of the heavenly community that Jesus describes.