There are times when community gets tough. When jumping out of the (fellow)ship seems way easier than sticking it out. But when we abandon ship because it holds people we don’t like, we also abandon community.

“Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together and not to the attractiveness of people to each other. There are many groups that have been formed to protect their own interests, to defend their own status, or to promote their own causes, but none of these is a Christian community. Instead of breaking through the walls of fear and creating new space for God, they close themselves to real or imaginary intruders. The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.” – Nouwen

It’s easy to build community when everyone looks like you, talks like you and believes the same things as you — but is that really the type of community we’ve been called to be a part of?

How have you struggled with these barriers? How have you overcome them?

“Love means loving the unlovable – or it is no virtue at all.” – GK Chesterton

Click here to view the embedded video.

Excellent!

How does your community of faith compare? Are you trying to push the Big Red Tractor with your own strength, or putting its true power source to full use?

Read more from Holiday at the Sea

This coming Saturday (Jan. 8 @ 9 a.m.) I plan to meet with a number of folks interested in building community within our tribe.

The group will be made up primarily of our community group facilitators and hosts.

We’ll be working through our regroup material as some what of a refresher course and I hope to show this video from the TransFORM Network as well…

Our vision for encounter — as well as our community groups is:

• Building spaces of grace
• Building intentional relationships
• Sharing relevant truth

But I’m curious…

What would you tell these leaders about building community?

What do you desire most in your search for community?

What do you find lacking most?

BTW – you’re all welcome. The discussion is open to anyone and everyone interested in building community and talking through what that means. Just drop me an e-mail and let me know if you’re interested in coming…

we had a great time Sunday with another living room encounter!

great food, great discussion (including some great insight from the kids as well).

but we’d love to get your thoughts on our living room encounters as well (whether you participated this time or not).

help us improve by taking a couple minutes to fill out our online survey. the results are completely anonymous and we won’t come banging on your door asking you to explain yourself.

Take the survey

thanks in advance!

So, I heard about a CRAZY idea while watching #thenines last week.

Someone has the audacity to think they can read through the entire Bible in 90 days! 90!

I have trouble reading through it in a year. (I even tried again this year and didn’t make it past January.)

But why is that?

Why is it that I can read 20 books a year, averaging 200 pages each — or 4000 pages total, but I have trouble reading the book that 95% of those other books are all about?

The Bible sitting on our office desk is only 1720 pages. IF someone were to read it in 90 days, it would only be 19 pages a day. That can be done over lunch!

options

So, I did a quick search and found a couple different options for the plan but they seem to all follow the same reading plan.

Zondervan has a slick package which offers some cool videos and special Bible to go along with it.

Biblegateway.com offers one as well that has all the reading available online — but seems to be built around a repeating schedule — and doesn’t seem to be something you can just jump into whenever you want.

Or there’s B90X plan that @stevenfurtick’s] and evolution church are doing. They’ve also got folks using the #B90X hashtag on Twitter for accountability purposes.

the plan

So — here’s the plan. I’m going to follow @stevenfurtick’s B90X plan (because it’s free and there’s already a community on Twitter doing it) and start my reading through the Bible on Sept 15 — tomorrow.

I’m also going to try and blog about the experience along the way and I’ll be tweeting about it (along with others who have already begun) using the hashtag #B90X.

So, who’s in? Who wants to join me?

Add your info in the comments or drop me an email and let’s do this!

do you twitter at work? do you twitter at encounter? about encounter? do you tweet your friends all hours of the day? or would you like to have a few more friends to follow and chat with via twitter?

we’d love to follow you (and of course we want you to follow us too ) and we want others to have a chance to follow you as well.

simply leave your twitter name in the comments below so we and other encounter peeps can find you.

or, if you prefer facebook, be sure and become a fan of our new facebook page and join in the conversation there as well.

We’re watching and discussing his videos with Tony Jones in our new community group, but thought this video bio was worth sharing with everyone here.

Join in the discussion.

I’ve been posing this question to a couple different people today — including our community group. Thought I’d throw this out to everyone to chew on and wrestle with.

Why do we meet together? Why has God put us together? What greater purpose can we achieve together that we couldn’t do on our own?

If you’re involved in a community group, feel free to answer relating to your group and/or answer it relating to encounter as a whole.

I had a great “e-mail” exchange this week via Myspace where we discussed other words that might work even better than “tribal.” For some, the idea of a tribe seems to exclusive. Historically, most tribes kept to themselves and didn’t look out for those who weren’t born into the tribe. I agree. The metaphor tends to break down there.

We talked about other words or metaphors that might better describe the relationships and ideas that the church should be built around. Other words that we mentioned were “community,” “family,” and even simply “church.” Sadly for some of us, some of these words carry their own baggage or negativity. Perhaps there will be (new) other terms that will best describe our church family in the future.

Regardless of which word we finally “settle on” I keep asking myself this same question, “So what does this tribe, this community, this oneness look like?” As I mentioned yesterday, “I’m not entirely sure – especially in modern America.”

But I do know this ::

Jesus told his disciples, “By this all men will know you are my disciple – if you love one another.” – John 13:34 & 35.

Seems that Christian brotherhood and sisterhood and community and unity were very big on Jesus’ plan/plate.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we read about the “tribes of Israel.” The 12 tribes whom God called upon to be different in their culture. To be set apart. To be unique.

He calls them to accept the foreigner into their homes.

He calls them to ignore the idol worship of their neighbors.

He calls them to put their trust in Yahweh rather than in a king, or a Pharaoh or a President.

He calls them to honor the Sabbath – a day you set aside all your business of the 24/7 consumerism and focus on God – the creator of it all.

And so the Hebrews get very accustomed to this calling of being “separate” from the world (not that anyone’s ever really figured that out).

And then Jesus shows up on the earth and starts telling everyone that he was forming a new tribe.

A tribe where the Hebrews would join together with the Gentiles. No wonder they got upset and had him killed. That in and of itself could be considered blasphemy.

It would be like the Texas A&M Alumni Association telling folks that from now on graduates of the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma will now all be considered a part of the Texas A&M family!

This new tribe that Christ was creating would be a tribe for all who were baptized into Christ and have clothed themselves with Christ.

Where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, American or Iraqi, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

It’s a radical idea and I believe it calls for radical changes in our thinking and behavior.

Because when the tribe succeeds – we all succeed!

I saw something about Roov.com a week or so ago but kinda bypassed it – thinking “oh great another Christian MySpace and Facebook.”

But Lee shared a post about Roov and I’m definitely more intrigued. Seems that Roov is more about building off-line communities than online communities.

Here’s a couple explanation videos:

What is ROOV.com? from ROOV.com on Vimeo.

ROOV.com Stories from ROOV.com on Vimeo.

Here’s what others are saying about it:

CatalystRoadTrip:

It’s a social networking site that works locally. It connects people in the same geographical area based on interests AND it gets people off the computer and into each others’ FACE – as they hang-out and do fun stuff together. As social networking gains popularity, a few people have questioned whether this phenomenon is actually making us more isolated. I mean, we may have 300 friends now, but very, very little depth, and less human interaction. ROOV is a welcome remedy to that, using the internet to help you meet & connect in real life – facilitating conversations and experiences that have real depth and meaning.

Urbanministry.org:

ROOV.com is a new way to meet others in your church and community, and to organize gatherings around causes you care about.

Jeff Goins:

I just joined ROOV.com, a new website to connect the Body of Christ. Why? Well, it sure wasn’t because I needed to be a part of another social networking site. No, in fact, it’s because ROOV is like the antithesis of what social networking sites represent these days – narcissism. Unlike facebook or myspace (which aren’t bad – I use both), ROOV doesn’t center around an individual’s profile. In fact, profiles don’t even exist. They center around groups and issues that matter, like “orphans and refugees” or “Impact Africa,” for example. I don’t think you’ll find any “I lost my digits” groups on this site – at least, I hope not.

Their goal is to connect people online so that they can connect offline. As someone who spends over 10 hours a day on the internet (that’s probably a conservative figure), this is something I need to do – unplug, detach, and really connect with flesh and blood.

I’m excited to find out more. Apparently you need to be involved in a local church body though – and encounter isn’t on the list yet – but hopefully I’ll get confirmation in the next day or so (or 5 min would be preferred) and I can explore the site for myself.

In the meantime… Are there ways that you are building off-line communities with the current “social networking standards” like MySpace and Facebook? Are there ways we can better utilize those tools?