(Re)creating Counter-Cultural Christlike Community

I've just come back to Grahamstown from a mind-blowing, soul-refreshing conference in Pietermaritzburg entitled "Reason and the Gospel in Varsity Outreach: Rekindling the Vision of Francis Schaeffer". In a few hours, I'll be off again to Cape Town, to celebrate Easter with my (biological) family, but now as I try to process the flood of stimulating teaching we were given at the conference, I thought I needed to blog a few of my thoughts.

Before the conference, I was concerned that it was simply going to be a rehash of Francis Schaeffer's work, which confronted the culture and worldview of the Western world with the truth of God's Word. If you've never heard of Schaeffer before, I suggest you check out http://www.francisschaefferfoundation.com/. I wondered how much relevance all his work done in the 1970s could help us now in our task of making disciples on the university campuses of postmodern South Africa. I didn't have to wonder long: Schaeffer was so ahead of his time, and his thinking so applicable to real evangelism and discipleship, that the conference was a huge blessing.

The two main thrusts of the conference were that we need to encourage people on our campuses to think with Christian minds (and do so ourselves), and that we need to create authentic, caring, Christlike communities. I could talk for ages on either subject, but what really impressed me (probably because I had never noticed it before) was the emphasis on Christlike community.

Ranald Macaulay, the main teacher at the conference, was Schaeffer's son-in-law. I was privileged to have breakfast with him on one of the mornings of the conference, and loved the way that he took a genuine interest in everyone at the table. He said that Schaeffer displayed the same concern for individuals, often spending time on his day off to take walks with young seekers who came to his home, answering their questions. Where he disagreed with them, he explained his point of view "with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:16).

In one session, Ranald taught on how what he calls the "Virus of Technique" has left us alienated from each other in the modern world, and even in the Church. Basically, our use of technology (including communications media, which is perverse seeing as they are meant to bring people together) has led us to focus on 'programs' (with one 'm' and no 'e') instead of people. Our technology has insulated us from really engaging in each other's lives. And so people in our age are hungry for authentic community. But at the same time, Church has become as 'mediated' as the rest of the world, with our media star pastors, hyped music and excellent shows on Sundays, but little influence the rest of the week.

Ranald read some hard-hitting quotes which resonated deeply with me. One excellent one was this: "The choice for God now has to become one in which the church begins to form itself, by God's grace and truth, into an outcropping of counter-cultural spirituality. It is after all only when we see what the church is willing to give up by developing this antithesis that we see what it is actually for."

Once this teaching session was over, I looked around the table at the other delegates from Rhodes, and their jaws, like mine, were on the floor in amazement. This is what we'd been talking about in our C@R leadership meetings. It's the 'counter-cultural spirituality' expressed in trends like the 24-7 prayer movement and the New Monasticism. It's what we need at Rhodes to draw unbelievers to the only place where they'll find unconditional love! And if it can work anywhere, it can work in the intimate small-town environment of Rhodes University, where students are hungry to engage more deeply.

But how do we get there? That's the question that I was grappling with on the way home, and still looms large in my mind. Cell groups are meant to be doing this job of providing community, but so often they fall short as we slip into ritualized, impersonal ways of interacting. It's not something that can be implemented by a 'program'; it's a change of heart, a work of the Holy Spirit. I've seen it happen among the leaders of Christians @ Rhodes, and among the core group of Isaiah 26:8. It's starting to happen again between me and a few new friends who are thirsting for something deeper. But how do we spread this until all believers exist in this state of oneness, until it reaches beyond various disparate clusters and we form a cohesive body? How can Christians @ Rhodes, individual societies and the churches in our town work to encourage it?

I don't know. But I know that God does know, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what he's planning as the next step for Rhodes. Please pray with me that he shows us the way forward.