Community of Adsideo

When the church starts to be the church it will constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices to sound above the noises of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say that the church of Christ is never an experiment, but wherever that church is true to its mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling Word of God to its own age. ~ Elizabeth O’Connor

“Pain cannot touch the highest joy; and that is why joy laughs at pain and rejoices in confounding pain. It is the conquest of suffering by disinterestedness, by unselfishness, by perfect love.” ~ T. Merton

Whether we like it or not…membership in the church is a basic spiritual fact for those who confess Christ as Lord. It is not an option for those Christians who happen, by nature, to be more gregarious than others. It is part of the fabric of redemption.
~ Eugene Peterson

It’s a very difficult thing to actually become the outcast, the needy one. The faithless one. The sinner. To come to the awareness that I’m not just to get close to the need of that person, and perhaps be contaminated because of the person’s need, but I’m the person who has within me all the problems that the outcast has.

This kind of identification, this real identification, is very difficult. We had a woman who came to me with great enthusiasm to announce that she had completed her requirements and was ready for membership. After she had finished the announcement and we had begun to rejoice together, she added a footnote. She said, “There’s one thing I want to make clear. I am not someone who has the needs most of the members have. I’m coming to help you minister to the need.” She wanted to make this clear.

I told her that I thought she probably was not ready for membership because the only way one could come into this society was through an awareness of one’s own need. One couldn’t come in simply to help minister to it. What I’m saying is that we miss loving our neighbor when we think other people are “not our type.” We miss Jesus. We can’t find him because that’s where he is. ~ Gordon Cosby

Love is a divine thing. If it enters a human heart it breaks it. The human heart was created in order to be broken in this way. It is the saddest waste if it is broken by anything else. But it prefers to be broken by anything rather than by the divine love. Because the divine love breaks only those hearts which consent to be broken; and this consent is difficult to give. ~Simone Weil

The movement between community and solitariness is woven into the fabric of who we are in Christ. We come individually and make our response to the Word, who invites us to become a new creation and to live in divine intimacy. We nurture our life in Christ as the personal conversation continues and as we gradually learn to do less of the talking and begin to listen. But because our faith commitment joins us to other pilgrims on the way, we are challenged to live the new life together. We become part of that continuing community of God’s people who exhibit a willingness to listen to one another. ~ Elizabeth Canham