Eric Lee notes the tension between an earlier post that I have written concerning the use of the term “community” in our congregation and how Samuel Wells, in summarizing Hauerwas, “uses this word 'community' 9 times . . . Now, if this word 'community' is through-and-through deemed bad as an "abstract, therapeutic non-biblical language," would you fault Wells (and by implication, your mentor Hauerwas) in using this word 'community' so often? Would you chide Hauerwas for not titling his book 'A Congregation of Character', instead?”

Eric goes on to ask, “Are Wells and Hauerwas deluded and co-opted by all that is 'morally therapeutic'? Or, perhaps, are they trying to make community something that is Christian? Is theology as much about playing games of 'Taboo(tm)' with language as it is about rightly ordering and orienting our language?”

He concludes, “So, therefore, I must ask: what is a transformed use of the word 'community'? Is it possible that when you hear the word community within our congregation that we mean it exactly as Hauerwas and Wells mean it when they use it? Must we ditch words altogether, or should instead we live and talk in such a way that they might say, "hey, what they mean by community is not what we --the world-- mean" ...? And my prayer is that they ask us.”

I’d like to respond and use the occasion to cross the line from “reader of the Hauerwas text” to “pastor.” First, Eric is astute as ever in picking up this tension between my posts, and justly pushes me not to “play games of Taboo ™” but to engage in “rightly ordering and orienting our language.” He is wise in reminding me. Language is never an end in itself, but is that through which we are formed to the end that really is, ultimately in the Word become flesh.

I think (or I think that I think -- I’m willing to be persuaded differently!) that the distinction between “community” and a particular local/catholic church (i.e., congregation) is precisely about rightly ordering and orienting our language for the proper performance of the faith given the saints as part of the tradition of Christian “congregations,” that is, Messianic synagogues, a concrete, embodied “leading together” by God – the Greek etymology of “synagogue” -- of an Israel that includes Gentiles through Jesus by the Spirit,” to keep our language descriptive of what God has actually done in Christ by the Spirit rather than risking its abstraction into other types of political realities. We need to learn to think "Jewish" when we think church.

I don’t think anyone have ever accused Hauerwas as being coopted by the “morally therapeutic”!!! Yet in some ways this is precisely the criticism to which Wells’ analysis of the progression of Hauerwas’ thought leads for the “early Hauerwas”. I would like to join this and push a little farther. Wells shows that there is a development in the Hauerwas text over time “From Community to the Church” (pp. 90-125). In direct answer to Eric’s question, yes, I do think that Hauerwas would have served God better to have entitled his book, “Congregation of Character” rather than “Community of Character.” Wells documents (successfully, it seems to me) a movement away from “formal categories” in early Hauerwas texts like “narrative” or “community” to the precise Christian formations that are anchored in a real catholicity such as “Scripture” and “church”. Wells writes that Hauerwas has journeyed “from character to narrative, and from a formal claim for narrative to a prescriptive demand for the Christian narrative . . . The journey from character to community (via narrative) is part of a longer journey from quandary to the Church (via character, narrative and community). This latter journey sums up Hauerwas’ whole project. His overall concern is to shift the focus of ethical reflection from the individual in crisis to the Church in its faithfulness. The purpose of theological ethics, for him, is not to make quandaries easier, but to build up the Church” (p. 61).

It is that end to “build up the church” that I want to commit my work. I myself, however, wonder if the language of “church” itself runs the danger of becoming an abstraction this days. I want to keep focused on the very real bodies of those baptized the God gathers together in a particular place in worship of the Triune God through which the Spirit makes the body of Christ visible in the world through the mutual participation in the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist – that which makes a congregation most local is precisely that which makes it most catholic (universal). I know that Stanley himself has pointed me in this way through particular references to specific congregation events and practices.

Must we ditch “community” completely? No, of course not. “Community” can be a good word to describe Christian realities; it can also be a word that becomes a parody of what it partially describes by having it placed within other narratives than the biblical narrative that witnesses to Jesus Christ and thus the church catholic. “Community” cannot become an abstraction from the catholicity in locality that is the fundamental political formation of the church -- local congregations – those whom God gathers through baptism to hear the Word proclaimed and the Eucharist validly celebrated.

This gets to the heart of the matter. I am concerned that to prioritize a language of “community” over “congregation” translates a congregation into an already given notion of human relationships as defined by social scientists within a certain demographic cross section of North American society. By seeing a congregation as a subset of the larger subset of “community,” a congregation becomes seen as a particular instance of a more general type of human relationships that is likewise available without Christ. One naturalizes the supernatural.

I think that to sustain the Christian reality of “community” we must subordinate the language to the congregation. A congregation must be seen as what is more “natural” than “community” – “community” both within and outside the church is that which must sign, prefigure, and must be raised up and perfected in a congregation in the sacrifice of the Eucharist for the baptized. Amidst those whom God congregates in worship, the natural becomes supernaturalized through Jesus Christ becoming present to us in Word and Sacrament.

Given this, communities can be important within a congregation, even a part of renewal for the congregation as the "community" gives its life over to the congregation while sustaining its particular Christian witness. It seems to me that we need to think “community” as closely related to a Christian notion of “friendship.” A congregation might be made up of types of “communities,” but the congregation, as simultaneously local and catholic,” is not a particular representative instance of a wider human social phenomenon; it is humans “congregated” in the body and blood of Jesus to be made the body of Christ in the world through preaching the gospel to all nations and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here we find an analogy with Christology: Jesus is not a particular representative of a wider phenomenon of “relationship with God” that is equally available to human beings, but is the One to whom the desire for relationship with God points to as the unique union of the fully human, fully divine in one person in whom we participate in God by the Spirit through faith.

This has real consequences in the life of a congregation. Persons who gather in worship detect when the human construction of “community” becomes more important than God the Father’s gathering of individuals from the world by faith in Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit to be made the visible body of Christ through the “community’s”, a subgroup within the congregation, use of verbal and non-verbal language. Rather than pulled together in the hospitality of the Triune God at a common meal in Christ, they feel repulsed, pushed away, their gathering called into question unless they already have passed the litmus test that adds membership in a “community” that is more determinative than faith in the Triune God as the people of God gather in worship.

I had a conversation last week with a person who had a good friend who visited Mid-City over a year ago. God forgive me as pastor, but this person would not come back because of a sense of “superiority over other churches” that the congregation as gathered communicated to this one whom God had gathered with us. I have heard several such stories. Within the last year, I was at a wedding in which a member of a different congregation spoke that their “community” had 50 or 60 persons gathering in worship. It was expressed that they did not want any more people to gather because it would “ruin the sense of community” that they now have (and thus, be a lesser church?).

“Community” in this sense can easily slip to prescribe a closed social network that “congregation” cannot -- as a congregation we do not pick whom God gathers to us, but have to be made adequate to live with those whom God gathers in this sign of the age that is yet to come in its fullness. Community usually has a certain voluntary, relational understanding implied. In our cultural context, “community” becomes those whom I name as “my community” – those with whom, as Bill Hybels says, I would like to vacation, or, in democratic political theory, those with whom I voluntarily enter into a social contract.

My pastoral concern is that "community" closes off a congregation to the stranger, those whom God moves into our live involuntarily, or moves those with less social, demographic status to the margins of our congregation. Those we designate as the “core community” (usually those with higher educational, economic and social status) are perceived to have more importance than others who have less social stability such as persons who are children or students or visiting a congregation in worship or even those who have been around forever without drawing any attention to themselves – i.e., the meek. An example might be Sukuma. Sukuma has been a faithful congregant for ten years now; God has gathered Sukuma more faithfully in worship than any other person in the past decade within the congregation, including myself -- and I haven't missed many Sundays over the years!!! Yet I have never heard anyone express concern for him in “the community” – he is not very verbal, wealthy, nor institutionally important for the continued life of the “community.” As pastor, I believe that I have a special responsibility to make sure that Sukuma is not overlooked, but honored, received as a gift, even a model for the rest of the congregation.

It is precisely those like Sukuma that the later Hauwerwas wants to make sure are fully incorporated, and even centered, in our account of the church – to accept the least of these as a gift, to honor those who receive least honor in the society within the church, to keep us open to God’s gift in the stranger to make us a hospitable people, open to surprises. It seems to me that the traditional language, even biblical language, of “church” or “congregation” (with its etymological ties to synagogue, and thus the Jewish foreground of the faith given to the saints) can open us to the Spirit’s sanctifying presence, to form us to what we really are, to reality as it is, in a way that “community” cannot. This is not to become a word Nazi; yet it is to recognize that our language will both reflect and shape the primary commitments, stories, and tradition in which we live our life, consciously and unconsciously.

It is in this sense that I think that Protestants must learn from Catholics until the day when we can become visibly united. The “new religious communities” live in and under the authority of the bishop, even as they engage in the special Christian catechism and charism unique to each movement. For Catholics, congregations (parishes) don’t mature into communities in order to be really Christian; communities contribute to vital, faith-full congregations in order that they might mature into losing themselves in the larger local body of Christ, the congregation, to whom they contribute their own gifts, under the pastoral authority of the bishop who ensures the integrity of the local/catholic congregations Eucharist. Thus the unity of the congregation, its catholicity, is sustained in its locality as the Eucharist makes the church (as Christ gives Himself in the Eucharist by the Spirit). In contrast, Protestants historically and contemporarily struggle with schism, persons breaking off, leaving a congregation because it does not exhibit the type of “community” into which individuals feel drawn.

As I finish this post, word has gotten to me that Dave Overholt is conscious and speaking! We give thanks to God and to those faithful friends and members of our congregation who continue to walk this path together in a special way with David, in whom God has already taught us much by his weakness – we can’t wait for Dave to teach us in his strength!!