Reading some blogs this morning and ran across this from John Chandler:
In The Forgotten Ways, Alan Hirsch describes this community of shared mission as communitas:
“Communitas is therefore always linked with the experience of liminality. It involves adventure and movement, and it describes that unique experience of togetherness that only really happens among a group of people inspired by the vision of a better world who actually attempt to do something about it.” (pg 221)
The church exists as an agent of the Kingdom of God. Our mission is to make the way of Jesus known…to put Life on display. Rather than hold on to the phrase doing life together, I am holding on to the idea of being life together. For me, this captures the idea that community, or communitas, must be relationships that are focused on a shared mission. Our relationships are not exclusively focused in toward each other, but alongside each other as Life is demonstrated.
I think even if Christianese adopts "Being Life Together" as the catch-all mission, the phrase still sends the message of Christian is a club, civic group, elitist group. That's why I think "Connecting people to Life" is a great mission because it's outward focused and actionable. "Being Life Together" is more of the objective of small groups or support ministries.
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