God is triune, Father, Son, and Spirit. Therefore, as His image bearers, we want and need Community in order to reflect Him to the world. Jesus even says that the world will know about His love through our unity (John 17:23).

What are some words that come to mind when you think of Christian Community? I have both positive and negative ones:

Negative: Hypocritical, judgmental, gossipy, awkward, fake, forced, stagnant, draining…

Positive: Authentic, transformational, encouraging, transparent, real, helpful, refreshing…

These terms may seem separate, but in my experience, in Gospel Community they seem to happen all at the same time.
Who hasn’t been a hypocrite, or judgmental, a gossip, or fake? I know I have been, and it’s in Community that these things really come to light.

1 John 1 is an awesome section of scripture where John talks about transparent Community.

“This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
- 1 John 1:5-9

If we act like we are sinless in Community we are deceived, but when we confess our crap, we experience the Gospel – the blood of Jesus cleanses us from our sin. Gospel Community is not free of sin, it’s full of it. And when it’s confessed and worked through in Community, the world sees and can experience the Gospel.

It’s in the “messy” parts of Community that Gospel happens.

A word that often doesn’t come up when we talk about Community is mission.

We must know that stagnant Community is not Gospel centered. The Gospel, the good news, is at its essence NEWS! Therefore, we tell the story of this news. The news is explored, explained, experienced and transforms in Community. We see this happening in Acts 2. This is not necessarily a prescriptive model for Community, but it is at least descriptive of how Gospel Community can work.

The college ministry doesn’t have “closed” groups, where people form “holy huddles” and isolate themselves from people searching and questioning. We think the “tight” groups that are going deep and talking about and repenting of their sin are the best groups for mission, because that’s where Gospel happens. All this nonsense about “we are just getting to know each other, so we can’t add new people to our group” needs to be repented of.

We have to stop putting our comfort above the mission. Our identity is in Christ, not in what the new person might think about us if we confess sin. In Christ we have the freedom to be real. The gospel creates authenticity because we are forgiven. We can’t talk about the death of the Son of God on the cross and minimize our sin. We are so bad it took the death of God to forgive us! If a new person becomes a part of a Community that “goes deep”, they are going to stick. People are starving for non-fake Community that tells the truth about the crap in their lives. And more than that we are starving for the good news about Jesus who takes away our sin and nails it to the cross.