It’s Monday, which means I met my accountability partner/brother at the golf course at 0630. Another amazing time of reflecting on gospel truths and unflinching sharing of current battles. I’m convinced that I do not have any more blind spots. I can see all of my sin every day. So I meet that with constant exposure and full disclosure of sin choices. Once that is exposed to my brother(s) that God has put in my life, they are then equipped to know how to pray for me and what questions to ask at any time.
One of my first greetings of the day was, “What’s up Ryan?! How was your easter weekend…” All three of these exchanges sounded the same. Except for one man who decided to be vulnerable. He said, “I feel bad. My family and I…well, we’re ‘those’ 2x a year people…” I immediately responded with, “that’s okay! I’m totally okay with that! You know why. At least you’re there. I’d rather have someone who comes twice a year than for someone to come out 50x a year but never show up in their hearts. Fake….” I don’t think that man was expecting that response. I always love dropping grace in places where it is not expected. It throws people off!
I’ve been enjoying reading in quiet places at work. Like a quick cross-fit workout, I’ll squeeze in 30min of reading during the workday. Today I sat in the locker room/bathroom and read Chapter ten in Larry Crabb’s book, Connecting. The subtitle was, “Dying Together to Live Together.” I know it sounds cliche, but it rocked my understanding of community. I had never thought about dying to self and putting to death the flesh in the context of community. I have been preaching and teaching that community must practice confession, repentance, and life together in the context of community, but I had never thought of killing the flesh as a communal practice. It makes sense and I am killing the flesh as a community.
Crabb put it another way,
The center of the Christian life, we should remind ourselves, is not about killing anything. The route to life is death, but the center of life, the point of Christianity, is living together in the enjoyment of God. We die in order to live.1
He goes on to unpack the role of the body in this collaborative dying,
Christianity is about the life of the Trinity released in human community. But the doorway into that life is death, and death is always painful. When Jesus died, he died alone. There is no greater pain. When we die to ourselves, we’re to do it together, with our community. There is no stronger bonding.2
And how apropos is it that on the day after Resurrection Sunday I would read that, “The cornerstone of the gospel is Christ’s death on the basis of our life.”3 Last year, during a Church baptism at the Beach, I saw a man named Kevin who was wearing a shirt that said, “I died in this shirt.” It was the shirt that was given to him when he was baptized at his former Church! YES!! I want to wear that shirt every day and celebrate my funeral and the freedom that comes as a result of my old self-dying and being replaced with Christ in me. Christ so desperately wants to continue living through me today. The conditions are all set to make that happen daily, hourly and moment by moment!
When I have presented this concept of communal dying and modification of the flesh to others in the Church I have received either joyful acceptance or reluctance. One on hand, either the individual will, in my opinion, overthink it and start to come up with scenarios of why it shouldn’t be (i.e. not everybody wants to share their stuff and quite frankly not everybody wants to hear it either). But that is to suggest that we have a vote in how Christ wants the body to live. Freedom is the only option, for that is precisely why Christ has set us free; that we might walk in it. On the other hand, there is joyful acceptance. Sort of that, “thank God because I’ve been waiting to do that” type mentality. Very few are in between. It has everything to do with fear vs. faith. Freedom vs. bondage. Focus on man vs. God. Pleasing self/others vs. pleasing the Father.
The result of maintaining the status quo of a comfortable community group, or, if you want to go old school, “Bible study” is maintaining the disconnect in the body. And then people turn to therapists or their “shrink” instead of bringing their struggles to the (coffee) table at community group. After all, if we are all priests (and we are!), indwell by the same Holy Spirit that indwelt and raised Christ from the grave, then we are FULLY equipped for every issue that may come up as we mortify the flesh in the community group that meets during the week for “fellowship.”
It’s time we take the power back! Let’s get our people out of the counselor's office and into the community. We are equipped to handle every situation because we have access tot the most powerful being in the universe. Let us avoid contracting out our issues and begin to pray for each other. Let’s foster a community of transparency that seeks to put to death the deeds of the flesh in the context of community.
God will give us the wisdom and discernment so that we don’t make confessing something that is should not be (i.e. “I must confess that I think you’re an idiot” or “I have to confess I’ve had sinful thoughts about three people in our group”). That is simply unwise and perhaps the byproduct of lack of doing life together with others.
Jesus brother said,
Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working (James 5:16).
Crabb adds,
The journey toward Christ is intended to be a group expedition where we walk together as honest strugglers who believe the end point is worth any hardship. We share the life of Christ together and are called to nourish that life in one another…
I have been dying with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ for years now and there is no greater joy than to glorify God by being satisfied in Him alone and shedding off all of what I thought was bringing me joy. It is liberating to reverse the exchange of the truth of God for a lie.
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- Larry Crabb, Connecting: Healing for Ourselves and Our Relationships, W Publishing Group: Nashville, TN. 1997. p. 95.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., pp. 99-100.
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