Responses on "When the Church was a Family" - Chapter 8 (Joseph Hellerman)

I am not my own. Just as any great movement may be founded on the ideas and desires of one person but can only be actualized by the support of many, so must I make my movements with the support of the faithful. I am currently in the midst of a very transitional stage of life that encompasses many decisions. I have emerged from my season of formal education and into a new season where I can continue to explore the complexity and simplicity of what it means to follow God in new confines. As I find my footing with those I live alongside, it is imperative that I continue to explore these new frontiers in community. What does that mean? It means that my God is your God, and I cannot speak on behalf of His will without your permission. It means that a group of people who together desire to see love, harmony and unity must decide together what that means in individual lives. As I make decisions about where I will go, what I will do, who I choose to spend my life with, I must send that decision through the ultimate filter: God. God is love, and love establishes itself on earth as the brothers and sisters of the church joining together in self-sacrifice. If the church makes my decision with me and for me, then love decides. And if love decides, God decides.

Amanda Paxton

As I learn to delegate my formerly personal decisions into the family church model of living, it allows the chance for those around me to insert “relational stakes” into my life. These stakes form bonds of reciprocal trust between myself, and those I am surrounded by. I am finding that these “stakes” that we place in one another’s life act as “safety-nets of love” when formed and pursued with confident expectation that the Body will be there for me and I for it. This reciprocal trust acts as relational glue to the Body as a whole, as well as invites Christ into every aspect of day to day living. Robert Green

“More often than not, we simply need to figure out how to get out of God’s way in order to let Him do His community-creating work in our lives.” …“Their decisions to enter the ministry did not come as individual emotional responses to a sermon or to a highly charged camp message. The decisions were hammered out in context of a community of peers and leaders who were well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual.”

I am finding that I simply need to get out of the way. Thinking back to six months ago it is nearly impossibly to really see the person I was back then. But in some ways I am still the same person. I like to be in control (of my own paradigm), in the know, in on the joke, and in on the adventure. I simply want to belong. I haven’t fully trusted the Christ, and in that I haven’t fully trusted the body. I do not like to admit this, because this means that my plan has failed, but it’s true. And so how do we get past this? How do we step out of individual crisis and into community struggle? We have to realize that we really do belong and then get out of the way. I have seen how this very reality has affected the people around me, and how when we release our decisions, worries, and struggles to each other the heaviness becomes lighter so that we are able to lean on each other and Christ during our darkest hours. The most significant decision I have made in the last 7 months was to move here (to Portland) and to be a part of the apprenticeship. At the time, I really saw those as my decisions to make, but now I see that they really weren’t mine at all. I threw myself into community, I was all in…or at least I thought I was. I still had A LOT of issues to deal with. And so these issues began to be dealt with communally. Sometimes I could appreciate it, other times, not so much. But in this I learned that I really would be nothing without this body of believers around me. So then, I choose to trust this body, but then I think that I have decided what is next on the agenda, and that it is my job to respond to the call that Christ has on my life. Is it really my decision to make? No, it is not. Joanna Miller

Decision making within the framework of church as family perhaps is the hardest reality that we have encountered yet in the journey this book has taken us on. Seeing how our western culture has distorted the strong group family that the new covenant church lived out is one thing, but consenting to practically put our personal decisions into the hands of that family is another. The activities that our church is involved in, the place where we live, and how we gather are things that I would like to determine. However, being in community is changing my own ideas of what church should look like because relationships with my brothers and sisters are starting to become more and more of a first priority. It is within those relationships that we can, together as one, envision a more perfect reflection of life as the church, and no longer do my own expectations have to be unveiled as false, leaving me with despair and disillusionment. When my paradigm reflects a lying down of personal desires, it frees up others in the body to do the same, leading to reciprocated giving. Agape love then becomes the reality and decisions as a group are no longer a hurdle to jump, but rather a joy to be experienced. Trevor Williams

Within my own personal confine, I see making decisions within the family (body of Christ) somewhat complicated but not an unexpected matter. Complicated in the sense that there are decisions of different matter and magnitudes. Those which are hard, I usually make alone and don’t include no one and those that are easy, I usually include others. But there are also instances that are the other way around. In other words, I can still make decisions alone even if I’m part of the body, its not automatic, we have to get in the habit of doing so in spite of the independence that is in our bags.

Being a part of the body though has helped me get a better understanding of how we operate as the church. Switching from independence and blood family to depending on the family of God. No longer an I but a we, no longer a one of singularity, but a one of plural. And only when we get to a point where we operate as one can we then be a community. A common-unity which is Christ. P.s. It doesn’t stop there. Mikey Romo

I’m observing that my thought processing and desires are shifting within myself. I have a habit of holding everything within me, emotions, thoughts, decisions and letting my pride control me. Pride saying: that I am capable of taking care of myself and do not need anyone else’s input or perspective or help. As my journey continues with this family I see things beginning to take shape differently within me. Not that I have arrived and am able to live this life perfectly or without struggle, but now I am finding myself fighting my selfish desires and fighting to release my pride daily. Realizing my decisions to be vulnerable to the community or to not be vulnerable affect the community, and that this family of God is not just about me an individual but it’s about us as one body in Christ. The by-product of putting the family of God first and allowing them to have a voice in my life and my voice in theirs is the fruit of the spirit. A voice that is more than just something occasional to draw from whenever I am facing a fork in the road, but one that is being breathed into me and me into it daily. In that posture of only drawing advice or help every once in awhile is me just consuming the church and not conceiving life into it. I am learning to release my fears of vulnerability and trust, and to get out of God’s way and let His Holy-Spirit work and to let this family of God invade my life. Knowing that, I now have hope in where this family is at now and what the future holds for us, because of what Christ did and is doing. Cassie Boddington

My decisions need to be made in the family of God. The journey to this point has been long and filled with much pain. My individualism lead to detrimental decisions; my entitlement lead to a broken relationship, a broken man. I am humbled and privileged to have a church family to which I can lay down my life in Christ’s name. If we truly believe in Christ incarnate, submitting my decisions to my brothers and sisters is submitting my decisions to Christ. Travis Reill

"My personal confine", my space or what I am limited to, isn't mine anymore, it's the community's and I am submitting to them and essentially to Christ through them. This affects me because I am in relationship with them and them with me and they know me, as family would, through time and experience of shared life, to know what the individual needs are. As a whole, they know the body's needs as well and inside of that, the best decision can be pursued when every best interest is in each decision, through that we can be united. As a whole we all are submitting to each one's needs and when we can take care of the community's needs then we can, as a whole, reach the “world's” needs as Christ’s body. Chanelle Freese

In the “strong-group” model the individual does not make individual decisions; the group comes together and collectively a decision will be made for the individual, a decision that will benefit the whole. The application of this has been difficult with the transformation from theory to practice. In theory I desire the church to help me make decisions in my life like job, spouse, where I live, etc. But sitting down with the body and freely laying down my own wants in each of these decisions is just not easy. There is still that voice in your head that will whisper, “If you don’t like what they decided you can just do what you want anyway.” Not listening to that voice is far more of a reward than giving into hyper-individualism and the fruit it creates. I have recently brought a decision to leadership about an upcoming trip with my dad’s congregation to rebuild a church building in Haiti. I can already see how not leaving this decision to be made on my own has affected not just myself but others as well. Normally I would have a certain level of anxiety with this decision but because I have released this to the body, I have little anxiety because I am not carrying the weight of this decision alone and whatever my brothers and sisters decide I know that decision will have been dealt with care and love. In sharing this decision there is greater opportunity for partnership between Adsideo and my dad’s church. When it could have been just me going, there is now the possibility for others to also be sent as a conduit of Christ’s encouragement. Though it is still hard at times to lay down my wants at the church’s feet, I hope that we can collectively continue to ask ourselves, “What does it mean to be the church?” Teddy Dickerson

The more we discuss our lives in the family of God, the more it seems ludicrous that we would find it an option to make decisions on our own. I do not live in a vacuum and, therefore, my individual decisions will inevitably affect another for better or for worse. Even those that do not submit to a community are affected by, or affect others by, these decisions. We have a tendency to look out for number one, however, if a decision is made to benefit the individual, in the end that is all it does. If a decision is made by the community for the community, the individuals who make up that community also share in the benefits and blessings and even more so than on their own because their celebration is more full as it is shared with the family. And thus, our opportunity to be filled and grow comes through emptying ourselves, being vulnerable to and investing in one another as the family of God. Christ is our ultimate example; he emptied himself not for himself but for his family and that the Father may be glorified. I recognize the need to humble myself to God’s family in the decisions of my life so that better resolutions can be made. Major decisions such as spouse, career, and location seem easy to recognize as those in need of input from the family. The difficult part for me is changing the way I flippantly make menial decisions so that the community, and myself as a part of it, has the opportunity to grow through even the small things. I am encouraged to know that in practicing this level of commitment to the family of God, “input from others [becomes] a way of life” (pg 170). And as I submit myself to the collective input and wisdom of the many members of the family of God, I can have confident expectation that my life will be an example to those who will follow with similar circumstances. Rachael Reill

Chanelle Freese on Relational Holiness by Oord and Lodahl

“Love- the heart of God’s character”… Character: “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual”. How does “Holiness” fit in the picture of love- Christ’s love? As the authors write about ”contributor” and “core” I think of the verse in 1 Corinthians 12:12 “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body”. Holiness: Its is a shared life, a life of communion. “Sharing life and the goods of life with one another.”

Holiness: A life of togetherness, and inside of that, loving one another, as he commanded us. It is active participation in the love between God the Father and God the Son- the power of presence and God the Spirit. What is active participation and what does that look like? How can we be active participants in this holiness living conversation? Why is it a conversation? How about “holiness” as a lifestyle, one that is lived out through practice? What does a life of togetherness look like?

Sacrifice, inconvenience and humility all play their own roles in this holiness life. If these are the pieces to holiness, what is holiness a piece of? Love has to be the ultimate goal of holiness. One might say holiness should have these characteristics: ”Personal Piety” (which is essentially pure reverence and being a completely devoted individual) “Mission Focused” (heavenly motivation, kingdom on earth and in heaven). “Sanctified” (set-apart for something)… The list could go on, but when it comes down to it, these terms are pieces of holiness and just that: terms.

Without love being the motivator, “terms” are worthless and individualistic. Individualism has no place inside of holiness or the “Holiness Movement” (talked about in chapter 6) this needs to be taken seriously by seriously loving one another and living life relationally. Relational Holiness is the only way this “Holiness Tradition” will survive; essentially it has no role in our lives if we are going to be holy on our own. Holiness has to be messy, because people are messy, and loving people is messier and God loved people. God loves. God loves me, a messy person; I love messy people because God loves those messy people and me. That is holiness. Living and sharing in each others messiness and making something beautiful out of “His Kingdom Come”, here on earth. God is love and God loves. This has to be the root, the goal, the ultimate, and the piece of the puzzle that drives us to be a holiness people.

As people gather together, (friends, families, neighbors) lives change and holiness takes place as we invite each other into our lives. Coming together creates a place for people to find God. To find true friendship that was made for us from Christ through us, to share in communion with Christ and those around us. As John Wesley said, “There is no holiness outside of relational holiness”. True holiness is found through love.

Trevor Williams on "Relational Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

As followers of Jesus the Christ, we long to walk as he walked, speak as he spoke, and love as he loved. Our prayer is to be unified with the God of the universe that came down from his timeless transcendence to be a lowly Jewish man in the midst of a particular culture. We see something in his life that is utterly mystifying. The way in which he lived and died is captivating, and the only word to describe it seems to be...love.

We find that Jesus' desire for our lives as well is to love, just as he is love. He even says the greatest command is to love the Lord with all of our heart soul and mind and love our neighbors as ourselves. The beautiful thing is, this command is not something that we really have to figure out on our own, because Jesus promised that he would send a “helper,” his spirit, to guide us into that reality. Not only would this helper show us the way to love, but it brings us into God's nature, so that we could be one as Jesus and his Father are one. Imagine that, not only did God choose part of his essential nature to come into tangible, human reality and live a life of service and sacrificial love, but he then invited us to unite with him in the same way that The One he sent is united with him.

Uniting with God, who in his own nature is a “richly complex relational matrix” as Oord and Lodahl put it, doesn't stop on a metaphysical level. Throughout the story of Israel, God's chosen people were to show the world what God was like through the lives that they lived; they were to be blessed so that they could be a blessing (Gen. 12:2). The reality that the God of Israel needs a physical representation in the world is shown with the story of Israel, Jesus, and now those who have chosen to follow Jesus, the Body of Christ. In our unification with God, through the outpouring of his love on our lives, we are now to be a blessing to all nations, to literally illustrate what Christ is like. Oord and Lodahl remind us that not only is this illustration of loving others important, but it makes complete the love that we have already received. John's epistle says it well, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”

In our western mind, as we begin to see the reality of the need of love to illustrate the love we have received in Christ through his spirit, we often leave it up to the individual to act out. However, as we are reminded in Relational Holiness, God in his own nature is communal, a relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit that is a dynamic giving and receiving of love. Not only is the God we serve relational, but he calls out whole groups of people to share in his love. Yes, he inspires individuals, but only so their reflection is in community. Jesus' prayer for his disciples was that not only they but “those who will believe through their word” would be one, just as Jesus and his Father are one. In reflecting the love that we followers of Jesus the Christ have experienced, we must truly become one. This brings up some very pertinent questions for us to ask ourselves, how are we loving our brothers and sisters? Are we unified with those we consider “the church?” How am I still making love individualistic?

The whole idea of relational holiness not only pushes us to walk out in love as the core of being holy, but also to do so in community. It would be easy to make love the core of holiness, yet still act it out in the framework of self. If we are truly to become holy as our relational God is holy, and to live out the vision portrayed from the beginning of God's story, we need to press into each others lives and reflect love together.

Travis Reill on "Relational Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

What is the core notion of holiness? Oord and Lodahl presented many different possibilities in “Relational Holiness”—purity, following the rules, complete commitment, being set apart, being perfect, and, lastly love. When presented the question and reflecting on my own life and what holiness/righteousness meant to me, the strongest reflections were perfection and following the rules. Holiness, or righteousness as it was most presented to me, was about being free from sin, being “perfect.” How was one to be perfect? By following the rules. How does one follow the rules? Don’t sin. Easy, right?

Christ tells us, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). In my upbringing, I read this as, “Don’t sin, ‘cause I don’t sin,” or, “Follow the rules, because I follow the rules,” etc. But I have to believe that this scripture means so much more, that Christ isn’t just saying to “not sin” and “follow the rules,” but he is speaking to a life changing way that can only come through him (“because I am holy”). And to understand the holiness that Christ possesses, one must understand that the core notion, the basic principle behind this holiness is love. And one must furthermore understand that the love being talked about here, the holiness love, is very much alive, flowing throughout this world. And this love is very intentional. It is not used as an adjective but a verb, an action—“Only those acts that are intentional should be considered loving” (pg. 74). So maybe to better understand how to be holy, I can say, “Love, because I love.” Yet it still isn’t full enough. How do I remain in this love, or stay in a state of love/holiness? And the ever-present question of who to love?

“We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:3-4). “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13: 34). This love seems to be about obeying Christ’s commands. So to remain in the holiness love, I must obey and do what Christ commands. And what did Christ command? Love one another. “But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:5-6). And who are we to love? Once again I take from 1 John, claiming that we “must walk as Jesus did.” So we are to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44), the blind man (John 9), the Samaritan woman (John 4), Pharisees (John 3), the man with leprosy (Luke 5:12), the paralytic (Luke 5:17), the 5000 (Mark 6:34). If I am going to walk as Jesus did, I must love everybody as Jesus did. Living a life of holiness means pursuing a love that can only be found in the example of Christ. Then and only then will I be holy, as he is holy.

This presents a small problem for my flesh, however. My flesh does not want to reach out to the Samaritan woman or to the blind man. My flesh doesn’t want to pursue the paralytic, nor does it want to associate with the leper. My flesh certainly does not want to feed the 5000. My flesh wants to follow the rules and try to remain pure. It eagerly awaits new goals and attempt to attain them, and new regulations to keep. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthy nature…” (Col. 3:5). My flesh is so staunchly opposed to this life of love, of holiness. If I am to “be holy, because [he] is holy,” then I can’t live through the resource of my flesh. I must live through Christ and his love. Then I can truly know what it is to be holy. 

Tim Meeks on "Relational Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

A God who is entirely transcendent (holy) is a God who is unattached from creation. While Christians want to affirm that God is in fact a relational God, the attributes which are applied to God refer to a God who is entirely transcendent. God is typically portrayed as a unilateral authoritative power that is unaffected and unchangeable in all regards. There is a balance to be found. If God is entirely transcendent, God cannot be known, if God is entirely immanent there is no distinction between God and creation.

God is transcendent as well as immanent. Thus we have a God who is "otherness." A God who, through holiness, is deserving of our undivided worship and love. However in his holiness, God is living present in our lives. While God is set apart, God enters into relationships. As Oord states, "God is not entirely independent because God is love and love is expressed in relationships." For a relationship to be meaningful there is a level of give and take, a level of dependence. This is essential to our theology of prayer. If God is not able to be affected by human interaction, prayer is meaningless and serves no purpose beyond obedience to what God has decided. "God is open to and affected by others because the creator and creation enjoy a mutual relationship.

The strength of the book "Relational Holiness" is the image it provides of God. In his holiness, God is a living and relational God. God has made himself known to us. God is a God of love and cannot act apart from that which is not loving. While God is set apart and above the created, God is relational and one with the created. What sets God apart is his Holy Love. God's love establishes his transcendence as well as his immanence. A God who is viewed as distant is not the God who sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross. Within the Church, we need to stop viewing God as a distant and unattached God. While we hold God as relational as well as Holy we often do not practice worshiping a God who is both. Moreover in our interaction with the world, we do not model relational holiness. We use holiness as an excuse to remove and alienate ourselves from society so that we might be away from the evil that plagues us in the world. However, God does not call us to be holy in regards of being above others, but in regards of being set apart to love him. In the Scriptural call to be holy, we are called to love others. Not to be legalistic, but to be loving and engaged with the culture of the World

God in his holiness, his otherness, does not distance himself from the world. God is active and intimate in the world working to transform the corruption in the world. God freely enters into give and take relationships. The manner in which we view God is essential to the God whom we worship and emulate. We are to emulate a God who is holy and living. We are to practice relational holiness thus we should not remove ourselves from people, but embrace and love people where they are at in life!

Teddy Dickerson on "Relation Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

I remember when I was a kid sitting in Sunday school listening to my teacher talk about Jesus Christ being my own personal Savior.  As I sat there on a round, not so comfortable, carpet, staring at this flannel graph of Jesus glowing like a light bulb, waiting to sing Father Abraham again; I had this image of what being a Christian looked like.  I saw each and every person that had accepted the love of Christ completely surrounded by a glass tube, like a sound proof booth on a game show.  This tube reached from the person all the way to God, creating a relationship that was independent from all the other people on earth.  I was safe in this tube because others could not affect my relationship with God; I was free and separated to walk my own Christian life.

I am thankful for the enlightenment that I had in my life when I learned that this Christian life is not meant to be lived alone, not to be separated into our own individual journeys but as Oord and Lodahl talk about in the book, as Christians we are the Greek word Paraclete “one called to be alongside.” I was trapped in this world of righteous personal piety, and was failing miserably.  The freedom that I experienced in the enlightenment of “relational holiness” has been something that has changed the way that I do life.  God continues to lead me on this journey where I find my relationship with Christ interdependent of the body of Christ.  Now that I have discovered this, it is like I am stepping into to the person that I was always intended to be, a person that is part of something collective that is bigger then just myself.  John Wesley said it best when he said, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.”

I was sitting at a coffee shop with a friend of mine, listening to him share about his current struggles with a bunch of difficult situations.  At one point I started to say something and he stopped me and told me that he already knew that I was going to say something about being loving.  I had to laugh because he was right.  We are to love, why?  This is stated pretty well in 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”  I hope that my first response to people and the struggles of life can be love.  The kind of love that Oord and Lodahl talk about, a love that has to be lived out, practiced, a love that takes on flesh.

Robby Green on "Relational Holiness" by Oord and Lodahl

We can all agree that to be holy is to love. The two are so closely intertwined that we cannot distinguish where one stops and the other starts.  But to be holy AS HE IS HOLY is where we get a little sideways.  God’s love is tangible within my own life. He has sacrificed much to be with me. The things that he did in order to relate to me I will never fully understand. Yet we in the holiness movement are reluctant to relate to the world. When Christ has so fully immersed who He is into the way I do business, why do we fear meshing with the culture around us?  In a world that says to exist is to relate we MUST learn how to belong. We fear the “If I have not love” clause in our life. Yet we live within the “I have love but you wouldn’t know it unless you came to my church” clause. To be honest with you that last statement makes me sick to my stomach.

John Wesley described love as “Bearing others faults.”  We cannot even start this conversation until we have “others” sitting at the table of our lives whose faults are present.  In my opinion to love as He loves begins with being relative to culture, and until this is where we’re at, our theology hangs limp at our side, or worse gets wielded as a weapon rather than a tool for loving. The first step in being relationally holy is being relational.

The second step is to be holy as He is holy, or to “be love as He is love.”  Lets break this down without using too many big words and thus protecting ourselves from any real action. To me being love means that when I leave this room I will treat my roommates better than I want to. It means that I will respect their requests when I don’t agree with them. It means that when Matt begins to tell me about his day I begin to actively listen, setting aside what I’m doing. It also means that when I meet with Teddy and Mark later, I do so with vulnerability and humility. To be love can be very inconvenient, but do not mistake inconvenience with joylessness. Let every action in my day be a privilege because I was dead before and now I am not. It is my joy to serve my roommates because six months ago I was a walking dead person, but Christ resurrected my life! That is as simple as I can break down holiness: living joyfully inconvenient lives because he has set us apart for pure and love filled life-plans.