Have you ever heard of the Ephrata Cloister? The Cloister was a group of Christians who practiced communal living from 1732–1934. They viewed themselves as a kind of monastic (celibate) community, with noncelibate “householders.”
Because I live about 20 minutes from the Cloister, I have toured it, and I find it an eerie experience, cult-like. Does Christian theology emphasize the idea of communal living?
This week on the blog, we’re studying 1 Thessalonians 5:13–15, 26, and in this post we’re looking at verse 13, where Paul teaches the Thessalonian Christians to “Live in peace with each other.”
I want to focus on the bookends of that phrase: “Live…with each other.” The phrase “live with each other” reflects the practice of the early of the church to view their faith as so much more than a worship service or religious rituals.
That phrase “live with each other,” tells us that we disciples of Jesus are part of a new family. Local churches are properly viewed as communities of people who are living together. Thus being a part of that community involves attending worship services for sure, but there is so much more as well.
Paul is not suggesting, however, that we need to live together in the same building. Christians could choose to live together in the same building. It is not wrong to start a commune. Some Christians through the ages have attempted communal living, and it has had mixed results.
My opinion is that the Ephrata Cloister, while somewhat successful, also veered away from Christian norms in significant ways. Some other communal Christians are the Bruderhoff and the Catholic Worker.
What do you think? Should Christians convert their church buildings into living spaces, sell our homes, and all move in together?
Let me repeat. Paul is not suggesting that Christians start communal living. Instead, he is primarily suggesting that a church family should see themselves as doing life together with each other. Paul’s is an expansive vision.
Paul’s expansive idea of a church family, doing life together, reveals that we can get the wrong idea about what church is intended to be, that it is mostly about what happens in this building from 9am to 11:30am on Sunday morning.
But let me ask, did Jesus call us to run worship production companies? No. It seems to me that a vast emphasis of what churches do is basically a worship production company. Holding worship services with quality music and preaching is not wrong. But if we put an overemphasis on it, it can become wrong, even idolatrous.
We can desire worship experiences that give us emotional charges. Maybe you have heard the phrase, “I want the preacher’s sermons to feed me.” And if a particular sermon is a dud in someone’s opinion, they might say, “I didn’t get fed today.” That is tiny, microscopic view of what a church family is supposed to be. There is so much more.
Think about how expansive the idea is that Christians are groups of people who “live with each other.” That means we care deeply about one another. That kind of deep caring requires that we go beyond just a worship production on Sunday morning. We go beyond reading each other’s social media posts, and maybe clicking “like.”
People who live with each other are spending time together in significant ways, including texting, phone calls, and in person. Being present with the person when they are struggling. Have deep, meaningful conversation, accountability, and sacrificing for one another. Then choose to check in, follow up, care for them, ask how they are doing, especially when they are in need. Which is treating others just like you God would treat them.
A community of Christians live with each other by opening our eyes, arms, and lives to include more and more people. Sacrificing our time and energy to welcome new people. This is seeking ways to regularly, consistently care deeply for one another. We can start by checking in for a minutes each Sunday morning, but we go deeper, beyond Sunday.
The early church is a wonderful example of this. They practiced a very different way of being a church family than what we are accustomed to in American Christianity. For example, read what are two of the earliest descriptions of the early church, Acts 2:42–47 and Acts 4:32–35, and you will see their sacrificial approach for relationships with each other, fueled by their passion for unity. These passages are perhaps the clearest depictions of what a church family should be. And where did they learn to be a church family like that? Did they arrive at that model after years and years and decades of failed experiments?
No. They learned it from the mouth and action of Jesus himself. These descriptions of the church are about people who had walked with Jesus. His disciples. His other followers. They learned from him how to live with each other. They had no buildings, no programs, no Sunday worship services with musicians and preachers.
They had worship for sure. They had preaching and teaching, for sure. But all of that was in the context of a whole life. It seems they lived in their own homes. But they shared life together. They went deep, sacrificially so.
I invite you to evaluate yourself. How deep are you going in your relationships in your church family? How can you go deeper? How often are you asking others in our church family how they doing? Are they struggling? Are they stressed out? Are they are okay? Ask them, then follow up with them. Then repeat over and over.
Photo by Zach Reiner on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 