As we move into the third Key Element of Formation, Community, we now reach one of the crucial challenges in modern Christianity. If discipleship is meant to happen in specific communities, why are so many Christians lonely and friendless? If we are formed by being part of close-knit, vulnerable groups who know us, our names, and embrace us even when weโre a mess, where do we find these types of people? We find some of the best examples of โICFsโ in a surprising placeโฆHollywood.
TRANSCRIPTION
Our Need for Small Communities
Season 3 is all about The Formation Gap, and the primary solution to it is specific types of communities.ย So, letโs do a quick review.
Soil and Roots
The premise of Soil and Roots is that discipleship is the journey we take to become more and more formed in the image of Jesus.ย That we think like He thinks, do what He does, desire what He desires, love like He loves. That our deep, unconscious ideas become like His.
This formation takes place in the very depths of who we are: our hearts, or our spirits. Or, as we often say here, our roots.
Our roots are planted in the soil.ย Our soil is the ideas and desires that power and govern us.ย ย We arenโt primarily what we think or even what we believe, but what we desire and what we love.
These ideas are extremely powerful things, but many of us arenโt conscious of them โ we just go about life being governed by them.
If you like visual aids and would like to see how this all fits together, check out the picture titled “Creation Picture 2” on the Resources tab at www.soilandroots.org.
An essential idea that powers our hearts is the Idea of the Gospel.
What, exactly, is the Gospel?ย As weโve outlined here, Western Christianity primarily functions from a reduced Gospel โ the good news that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Thatโs absolutely true, but itโs not the complete story. The comprehensive good news is the Gospel of the Kingdom, which is the primary theme of the New Testament and the biblical narrative of human history.
The Forgotten Kingdom
Unfortunately, much of modern Christianity has become Kingdom-less. Weโve Forgotten the Kingdom.
Although the point of discipleship is for our hearts to become formed to be more and more like Jesusโ, thatโs really hard to do if weโve forgotten His Kingdom.
We may follow Jesus as our Savior, but we have very little vision for Him as Lord and King. What is the Kingdom? What relevance does it have for us? Does it impact our day-to-day lives? Does it have any bearing on creation and culture?
Do we truly embrace the idea that our purpose, our why, our role is to love God, people, and ourselves, and to multiply, steward, and rule the earth with Christ as He makes all things new? Or as Paul says, to reconcile all things to Himself?
We pray for this every time we recite the Lordโs Prayer. Jesusโ kingship is proclaimed in churches all the time, whether itโs through modern worship choruses or every time we sing Joy to the World at Christmastime (although it wasnโt originally a Christmas carol).
The Discipleship Dilemma
If Jesus is the object of our formation, but our vision of Him is unclear or incomplete, we now find ourselves in a Discipleship Dilemma. We donโt have a clear picture of who weโre supposed to become more like.
Also, if we desire to become like Jesus, we need to know two people: Him and ourselves.ย We desire to know and embrace His story, and we desire to know and embrace our own stories as part of His story.
That second part has become a real stumbling block in modern Christianity. Because the culture has become saturated with worship and even the divinity of self, we find ourselves legalistically swinging the pendulum entirely in the other direction.
Several Christian apologetic and worldview videos are always popping up in my social media feeds, and just this week, there was a short clip of a young, handsome preacher condemning personality tests and exploring how God has individually wired us.
He cited Luke 9: โIf anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.[1]
This young evangelist was making the case for ignoring, if not rejecting, ourselves altogether.
I see this idea more and more in modern evangelicalism, and itโs a terrible mistake.
This is a profound difference between self-denial and self-rejection.
To place ourselves as the center of the universe is bad; thatโs self-worship.ย Exploring our hearts and stories to grow more like Jesus is good โ in fact, itโs a vital aspect of placing Him at the center of our universe.
Remember, Proverbs 4:23 instructs us to, โWatch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.โ[2]
Proverbs 20 says, โA plan in the heart of a man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out.โ[3]
And we shouldnโt consider 30-second TikTok videos or short, pithy Christian statements to play much part in our discipleship. We should avoid โMcJesusโ and โMeme Christianity.โ
So, there are two parts to this Discipleship Dilemma: we struggle to understand the object of our formation (Jesus) because weโve lost the grand vision of His Kingdom. And now, thereโs an underlying idea in some strains of Christianity that suggests exploringย our hearts or working to understand why we think, act, and speak the way we do is somehow un-Christian or selfish.
Work of a Divine Artist
Hereโs another point illustrating the benefit of exploring our own hearts and stories with the Spirit and some friends.
Have you ever studied a majestic painting? Have you ever immersed yourself in a classic, deep book? Have you ever listened to a piece of music over and over again, just so you could pick out each part, melody, and counterpoint?
Have you ever explored the heart of your spouse, your kids, or a treasured friend?ย As humans, we are created to create, explore, and discover.
C.S. Lewis famously wrote,
โIt is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, to some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.โ[4]
You are an eternal, handcrafted, utterly unique work of a Divine Artist. The NASB version of Psalm 8 says, โ…You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!โ[5]
Are you not worth exploring? Is your heart not worth pursuing, not worth understanding?
These are rhetorical questions. You are completely and wholly worth exploring and understanding.
Your heart, with all its bumps and bruises, hurts and harms, desires and ideas, is precisely where God meets you and lives in you.
As we talked about in Season 2, thereโs recent evidence in the field of neuroscience that suggests that sharing your story, exploring how youโre wired and why, actually leads to neurological healing in the brain.ย It restores severed connections. Seems like both of Godโs books suggest we explore our own hearts as we seek to live abundant lives in Christ.
The idea of rejecting or ignoring ourselves, our hearts, sounds somewhat Christian today. The idea of turning away from our stories and our wounds and just pushing on through with service and volunteerism and Christian activities sounds very evangelical and American.
But if youโre a parent, is this what you want for your own children? Do you want them ignoring their hearts, living in woundedness, and just pressing on for the sake of the cause? Does that sound like something a loving Father would want for His children?
The Formation Gap
While we wrestle with the Discipleship Dilemma, we also ask ourselves if we have access to environments that encourage and foster that sort of dynamic, spiritual formation.
Some great Christian thinkers argue that the only element necessary for our formation is habit.ย If we simply practice certain spiritual disciplines consistently, weโll be well on our way to becoming mature Christians.
And much of modern Christianity is based on the unconscious idea that, really, the only element we need is instruction. If we just agree to correct doctrine, that will result in our hearts being formed.
But there are Five Key Elements of our spiritual formation. In fact, these five elements are common to any type of intentional human formation: intensive time, specific habits, community, trusted intimacy, and repetitious and increasingly complex instruction.
If we live in cultures or communities that donโt embody these five elements, we live in a gap. The Formation Gap. And weโre discussing how we might fill that gap with what we call immersive communities of formation. At Soil and Roots, we call these Greenhouses.
Weโve taken a brief look at time and habits so far this season; today, letโs start exploring the third element: Community.
The Third Element: Community
If youโve made it to Episode 38, youโve obviously invested some serious time in exploring the deeper things we tackle here.ย And at times, you may have felt some tension along the way these past 37 episodes.
Maybe the concept of the Kingdom is new to you, or maybe youโre still wrestling with the necessity of exploring your own heart as a critical part of the journey of becoming more like Jesus.
Maybe youโre still trying to get your arms around Heartview, this habit of evaluating what we think, say, and do to explore our roots, ideas, and desires. Maybe youโve concluded youโre a Christian fatalist and are not sure what to do about that.
Fair enough. Iโve had several moments of tension myself.
All that to say, weโre now entering a part of Season 3 that, if you havenโt felt any tension yet, you probably will now.ย Weโre coming to the very heart of the three problems and the solution weโre exploring: the creation of specific, intentional communities that may or may not exist in your world right now.
Our natural, default response to exploring five-element communities (Greenhouses) is to want to assume or conclude that our local churches are immersive communities of formation.
And I want you to hear me โ your church may very well be that. Thatโs good.
You may want to quickly defend your small group or your menโs or womenโs group, your Bible study as being an ICF. Your group may very well be that. Thatโs good.
You may want to defend your family, your home school group, and your group of friends as a type of Greenhouse. Your group may very well be that. Thatโs good.
My intent here is not to put anyone on the defensive. Many people love their churches and their pastors. Thatโs good. Many people have very meaningful, formative, long-term relationships with people in small groups and Bible studies. Thatโs excellent. Many people can very truthfully answer this critical question โ do I think, speak, act, and love more like Jesus now than I did five years ago because of my church โ with a resounding yes! Thatโs very good.
However, as I laid out in Season 1, I think we have good reason to be concerned, in general, about the church in the West, and we should come together to fix it. Weโve looked at indicators such as divorce and abortion rates, porn usage, sexual harassment, and corruption in Christian institutions. Not all of these things are widespread, but too many of them are.
And any honest evaluation of the seven mountains of culture must include the cultural mountain of the church.ย If weโre going to point fingers at bad ideas, destructive behaviors, and harmful policies in six of the cultural mountains, we need to also look at the seventh.ย In general, as goes the church, so goes the culture.
But, if you walk away from this section on community and conclude I donโt support or have lost all faith in the local church, you will have come to the wrong conclusion. Good ministry and transformed lives are happening at and through solid, Bible-believing local churches. No question.
That isnโt the question weโve been wrestling with.ย Weโre asking if our church institutions exist to form us more and more into the likeness of Jesus.ย Do our church institutions embody and embrace all five elements of formation?ย Are our churches teaching and living the Kingdom life? Are they helping us get to know Jesus and ourselves, and are they forming immersive communities to that end?
By the way, I regularly meet with pastors in my area to brainstorm and discuss the topics weโre exploring here. As you might imagine, many church leaders echo the Three Primary Problems louder than I do. ย Most of the pastors I meet with have a much deeper understanding of the problems of the institutional church than I do, and theyโre also searching for solutions.
That being the case, you may still feel some tension as we explore five-element communities about churches, and thatโs okay. Enough disclaimersโฆ
Letโs dig into the element of community.
Sit-Com Communities
Iโve wrestled for several months about how best to illustrate an immersive community for you.
Most of the questions I get from listeners are โhowโ questions. How do we form five-element communities?ย How can we form them in our churches, families, and small groups? Weโve been attempting to answer some of these โhowโ questions as we moved through Season 3.
But as Iโve thought about how to best paint a picture of what the heart of an immersive community looks like, the best illustration I can find comes from an unexpected place: Hollywood.
Iโve said before that I think Hollywood oftentimes has a much deeper understanding of what it means to be human, the human heart, and human longings, compared to many Christian institutions.ย Hollywood understands weโre primarily creatures of desire, and they know how to tell stories to provoke our hearts.
Yes, God speaks through Hollywood. If Jesus is the King of the cosmos, and that includes the cultural mountain of Arts & Entertainment, then we should expect to see His ideas showing up in movies, music, shows, and advertisementsโฆfrom Hollywood.
Some Christians think that truth can only come out of the mouth of their favorite pastor or preacher. Truth comes out of the mouths of all sorts of pagans. Godโs goodness shows up everywhere, and lots of people who donโt follow Him still reveal His truth.
One of my favorite movies is The Matrix, released in 1999.ย The movie is crammed full of themes of sacrifice, resurrection, humility, and atonement.ย I doubt the directors had any desire to do so, but the Gospel is written all over the Matrix.
And then they went ahead and made three sequels, all of which were terrible.
Anyhow, suspend your disbelief for a moment, and letโs take a short journey into the Hollywood world of sitcoms.
When it comes to TV watching, there are three categories of Christians.
The first group watches TV but wonโt admit it for fear of being seen as disobedient and secular. The second group watches TV and doesnโt really care what anyone else thinks.
And the third group? Those are the Super-Christians, and they donโt own TVs. And they generally make sure everyone knows they donโt own TVs.
Anyhow, Iโm going to list a few of the most popular situational comedies from the past several decades, and I want you to think about some of the common themes and characteristics among them. Hopefully, youโve watched a few of these, or at least are familiar with some of the characters. Otherwise, this episode may not make much sense to you.
ยท The Office
ยท Friends
ยท Full House
ยท The Big Bang Theory
ยท Parks and Rec
ยท Cheers
ยท Community
ยท Seinfeld
Now, letโs dig into some of the things we find in common with each of these shows about community.
1. Time.ย In each of these sitcoms, how much time do the core characters spend with one another?
In The Big Bang Theory, a few of the lovable, geeky scientists live with each other, and they all work together. They go to the comic book store together and take adventures together.
In Seinfeld, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine donโt live together, but they spend a ton of time in Jerryโs apartment and at Monkโs Cafรฉ.
The bar, of course, is the centerpiece of Cheers, and it certainly seems that Sam, Diane, Norm, Frasier, and the gang spent much of their time there.
In Friends, most of the show takes place in Monica’s or Chandlerโs apartment, and at Central Perk, the nearby coffee shop.ย The six friends spend a lot of time in those places.
2. Acceptance. How accepting are these groups of their members and visitors? Thatโs half the fun of watching the shows โ to see how these characters accept and embrace each otherโs quirks.
Though Dwight Schrute is routinely pranked and ridiculed in The Office, he is still part of the family. Heโs accepted and embraced, even by his arch-nemesis, Jim Halpert.
โJoey doesnโt share food!โย Doesnโt matter; his other five friends take him as he is and learn to live and work around his flakiness and idiosyncrasies.
Whether you watch the original or the remake of Full House, what does someone yell every time someone knocks on the front door of the Tannersโ home? โAlways open!โ
That isnโt just something they say because the door is unlocked. Itโs the primary theme for the entire show.ย The Tanner family is always open to anyone who needs them.
Even Garry Gergich, or Terry, Larry, or Jerry, who is the constant object of scorn and ridicule on Parks and Rec, is still counted as a friend among his peers and, in the end, is restored in more ways than one.
3. This brings us to another common theme of Growth and Restoration. Characters who have lost something or been denied something or lack something end up being restored, or at least grow, through their community.
Michael Scott finds true love. Chandler Bing grows up and embraces adulthood. Sheldon Cooper wins his Nobel Prize. Leslie Knope wins some big elections. Jeff Winger graduates from Greendale Community College and becomes a teacher.
Seinfeld is the exception because itโs a show about nothing. But the rest of these shows feature characters who recapture something lost or achieve the impossibleโฆ because of their community. Their community forms them.ย ย
4. Group commitment. Each of these shows features characters who are committed to a specific, central group. Unlike some of us who have a work group, a church group, a small group, a soccer group, a dance group, and so on that weโre trying to maintain, thatโs not the sitcom formula.
Each show features a small group of typically three to ten people who arenโt trying to become ingrained in lots of groups. Theyโre primarily committed to one – their core group. They live integrated lives with their central group.
Sometimes itโs a biological family like the Tanners in Full House.ย Sometimes itโs a mix of family and friends, like on Friends.ย Sometimes itโs a disparate group of folks from different walks of life, like on The Office or Community.
Sitcoms show us a world where different people come together and remain firmly committed to their core relationships despite many other potential distractions.
When they hurt and wound one another, they work it out. It may take a few episodes, but in sitcoms, forgiveness is almost always a given.
5. Familiarity. Whether the characters are biological family or not, they treat each other like family. When Norm walks into the bar, the entire crowd yells his name, a meaningful sign of acceptance into the Cheers family. Ron Swanson eventually invites people to his remote, off-the-grid cabin and into his heart โ he slowly accepts and embraces his quirky work family.
Despite Sheldon Cooperโs OCD about โhis spotโ and insisting his friends taxi him around, by the end of The Big Bang Theoryโs twelve-season run, Sheldon has been won over by the love, persistence, and patience of his friends, and even begins to show signs of selflessness. He has grown into his family.
Sitcoms and the Human Heart
A commitment to spending time with one another. Acceptance into a small, transparent group. The chance to be restored, healed, grown, and forgiven in and through a special community. A commitment to one another that transcends the other distractions of life. And a familiarity, an ease, a vulnerability.
A place where the door is always open. Where everybody knows your name.
Hollywood sitcoms consistently paint a picture of a deep, universal human longing.ย To be a part of a community that wants to be with us.ย Who takes us as we are, though doesnโt allow us to stay there.
This is why we tend to relate so well to many sitcom characters. We long for what they long for. We desire what they have.
Each of these sitcoms shows the essence and depth of an intentionally formative community.ย A group that sacrifices time and other distractions to be with one another, to help form one another, to journey together.
The sit-com metaphor only goes so far, I get that.ย For one thing, theyโre made up.ย The situations arenโt real, and the characters are intentionally overdone.ย Theyโre often more caricatures than characters.ย Actual human beings are far more complex than characters on a 22-minute-long show.
But the point isnโt to argue for the reality or even morality of the Hollywood sitcom.ย The point is, these shows are so successful because they tap into our desire for a deep, abiding, trusted sense of community within a committed group!ย Weโre made for that.
Are Our Churches Like Sit-Com Communities?
It seems like Christians, who have particular reasons to form these communities of fellow Image-bearers, may not be any closer to doing so than people outside of the church.
Mike Frost wrote an article called โThe Lonely Crowd: Churches Dying Due to Friendlessness.โ
He writes, โIโve lost count of the number of Christians whoโve told me they either stopped attending church or left their church to join another because they couldnโt make any friends there.โ
He acknowledges this isnโt just a church problem, itโs a social contagion. He brings up an older study on people and friendship:
โPeople were asked to list their friends in response to the question, โOver the last six months, who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?โ In 1985, the most common number of friends listed was threeโฆ
But by 2004, the most common number of friends with whom you would discuss important matters was zero. And only 37 percent of respondents listed three or more friends. Back in 1985, only 10 percent reported having zero confidants. In 2004, this number had skyrocketed to 25 percent.
โฆOne out of every four of us is walking around with no one to share our lives with.โ
He notes three reasons why people struggle to form legitimate, real friendships in the church:
1. Church people arenโt good listeners
2. Church people struggle to be vulnerable
3. Church people need to be less busy
1. We arenโt good listeners.ย Weโve talked about this at length on Soil and Roots.ย Disciples in community work together to learn the habit of listening to Godโs voice, the hearts of others, and their own hearts.ย But we can be terribly distracted people.
2. We struggle to be vulnerable in church. This is another aspect of sitcoms that makes them so relatable. The characters are often uncomfortably vulnerable. A Michael Scott or Leslie Knope makes us squirm because they allow their quirks and weaknesses to be so blatantly on display. Not so in the church. In church, we need to be seen as the โgood people.โ
3. We need to be less busy. Frost writes, โSpending time with someone is a sure indicator that you value them, and feeling undervalued is a sure-fire friendship killer.โ He goes on, โFriendships are often forged in the conversations that occur when weโre playing together. Hanging out, attending parties, camping, hiking, picnicking, goofing offโฆโ[6]
Forming these types of friendships at church can be difficult when we prioritize multiple different groups. Again, the sitcom community develops such closeness because the group prioritizes that group, not all sorts of different groups.
Five-element communities (such as Greenhouses) as Sit-Com Communities
As I have continued to have conversations with Christians about forming Greenhouses, you can probably guess the number one concern: โWe donโt have the time.โ
Iโve already challenged us on that objection.ย Most of us have already reprioritized our lives for the people we love. We did it for our lover, weโve done it for our kids. If youโre caring for an aging parent, youโve found the time.ย If youโre suffering with a friend going through cancer, you have found the time.ย Weโre actually quite used to reorganizing our lives around the people we love and making the time.
If you think through the deep communities portrayed on Friends, Cheers, Parks and Rec, we may internally scoff and think, โThese are made up. No one has that much time to spend in a coffee shop. Sitcoms show fabricated snapshots of made-up characters, not complete lives.โ
Well, this is where the rubber inevitably meets the road. If we agree that a solution to the Forgotten Kingdom, the Discipleship Dilemma, and the Formation Gap is to fill the gap with Immersive Communities of Formation, that leads to some potentially difficult questions.
1. Am I currently part of a five-element community? Am I a part of a community that shares the characteristics of the longings portrayed on the sitcom?
2. If not, why not?ย Do I not have the time?ย Have I made time for other formative communities, such as marriage, children, and work?ย If Iโve made time for those immersive communities, why haven’t I made time for one intended to help me become more like Jesus?
3. If my church isnโt like a Greenhouse, can it be? If not, where might I recreate one?
If youโre beginning to get the sense that these Greenhouses may mean some potential changes to the way we currently live our lives, you’re right.
Recreating a sitcom-type formative community requires change and sacrifice on several levels. Yet itโs what we long for. Itโs what forms us. Itโs what the human heart truly needs.
A place where the door is always open. And where everybody knows your name.
[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Lk 9:23โ24). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Pr 4:23). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[3] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Pr 20:5). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[4] Lewis, C.S. (1949). The Weight of Glory (pp 45-46). HarperOne.
[5] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Ps 8:5). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.
[6] https://mikefrost.net/the-lonely-crowd-churches-dying-due-to-friendlessness/
