Midweek meditation from Pastor Dave September 11, 2024

Yesterday, Bill, Drew, and I attended a clergy gathering in Ooltewah with the bishop of the Holston Conference, the Rev. Dr. Debra Wallace-Padgett. She reinforced among us the importance of having a sense of true community, not only among the clergy, but in our congregations as well.

So much of what passes as community in our culture is relatively shallow and superficial. We may talk about sports, for example, or the weather, or last night’s presidential debate, but it rarely goes much deeper than that. We rarely probe beneath the surface to matters of the heart and the soul and the spirit. But she suggested that there is a hunger in our world—and certainly in our churches and among clergy—for a sense of true, deep, real, authentic community.

She offered for our consideration three characteristics of true community. First is the element of trust. We trust the people with whom we share true community. We trust them with our questions, our concerns, our struggles. We trust them to hold in sacred confidence what we share with them from our hearts and lives. And we trust them to be honest with us, to tell us what we may not want to hear but what we may need to hear. We trust them.

Second is the element of teamwork, a sense that we are engaged together in something larger and more meaningful than anything we may be doing individually. This team spirit can be experienced at the workplace, at school, or on the sports field, but it can certainly be experienced in the congregation, as we share together in the mission Jesus gave us to be and to make disciples who make a difference for him in our world. We’re on the same team.

Third is the element of time. We spend time with those with whom we share true community. The bishop shared a story of when her family moved to a new community when her daughter Leandra was a preschooler. Some of the children in the neighborhood came to their house and wanted to meet Leandra. Her mom encouraged her to come out of her room and meet her new friends, and Leandra said, “friends are like new songs – you can’t learn them in one day.” It takes time.

Time. Teamwork. Trust. Three elements of true community.

I’m grateful for the experiences of true community in my life—for the HeBrews men’s coffee group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 7 at Mayfly, for a clergy group I meet with on Wednesday mornings, and for an eclectic group of non-clergy friends from my childhood and college days.

The bishop left us with a few final questions. I’d like to share them with you for your own consideration.

1)        How would you assess the quality of true community in your life?

2)        What is one step you can take to increase your deeper connection to two or three others in your life?

3)        What is a next step that you can take to help elevate the sense of true community here at Signal Crest?