Barnabas File

During August I spent two weeks in the Kansas City area and northern Missouri related to my work with Central Baptist Theological Seminary.   Seven of those days were at Conception Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, located on a beautiful site in the middle of rolling farmland.   The monks pray in the Abbey Church (minor basilica) five times a day—vigils, lauds, daily Eucharist, vespers and compline.  At the center of their worship is chanting of the psalms.  We regularly joined in at least three of those times of worship daily. For a Baptist, the worship is both alien and familiar.  The style and theological emphasis is definitely different, but the central place of Scripture brought new life to familiar texts.  Underlying the worship, however, is the commitment of the brothers to prayer and service. This was my third time at the Abbey, but I learned a lot more this time about the life of the brothers.  Their monastic life may be immersed ...

Only in recent years have I come to see the Doctrine of the Trinity as essential to a full understanding of community among the faithful and healthy group formation.   The interaction of Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer—Father, Son, and Spirit—in the Godhead provides fresh insight into God’s expectations for any community of believers. In Discovering the Other: Asset-Based Approaches for Building Community Together, Cameron Harder points out that although we have been baptized in the Triune name—“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”—we fail to acknowledge it, especially in the way that we function in community.  Harder suggests that  “God’s Trinitarian life is, at least in some ways, the source and model for our human community.” (p. 21).    This suggests some principles for building humanity community (pp. 22ff): Community is built out of conversation. Creative conversation is adjustment to the other. Community is a web of relationships. Differe...

Although Paul was not a systemic theologian or a small group facilitator, his writing in   Ephesians 4:11-12 about the way the Spirit works to create a community of believers provides some ideas about what is necessary for a group to grow in spiritual maturity, service, and unity: “ So Christ himself gave   the apostles,   the prophets,   the evangelists,   the pastors and teachers,    to  equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ   may be built up  until  we all reach unity   in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God   and become mature,   attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (NIV) The various leadership roles in the life of the church have one primary purpose:  “to equip his people.”  Those who are leaders of a group invest themselves in others.  They call out the best in the group members and encourage them to stretch their boundarie...

A person does not need a theological degree to pick up the biblical emphasis on community.   In Genesis, we read that God created humanity for fellowship with God and then created the family unit of the man and woman.   God called Abram out of Ur to father a nation of people.   The children of Israel struggled to be a people who supported one another in their devotion to God.   Christ called to himself a group of disciples so that he might share with them and begin forming them as apostles of the faith.   Through the work of the Spirit, the church—a community of the faithful--came into being after Pentecost.   Paul and his team went about the Mediterranean world planting communities of the faithful.   Finally, out of the scriptures, early Christian scholars perceived the doctrine of the Trinity, a mysterious relationship between Creator, Redeemer, and Spirit that has existed through eternity. Therefore, it should come as not surprise that the ...