Community

Practical implications from trinitarian theology upon purposes and structures in the local church

What follows is an outline of several practical implications, which I believe emerges when we allow trinitarian theology to shape how we go about ministry within the local church. 

God

1.      The essence of God is relational love, because He is the triune community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2.      The triune symbol by which we speak of God, serves to invite us towards the life and love eternally shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit. 

3.      Our entire experience and knowledge of God arises from His revelation in Christ, as the God who is the triune community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Humankind

1.      Arising from the love resonating within His triune personhood, God created Humankind for the purpose of community with Himself.

2.      God therefore created humankind in His image, which is the communal life of His triune person-hood (Gen 1:26-27).  The image of God is therefore expressed not in one solitary human, but only in humans in relationship with one another (“male and female”, who together comprise the family of God).  A person can never be complete in him or her self apart from relationship in community (ie., ren- “man in society”).

3.      The tragedy of sin was that this community between God and humankind was fatally broken. 

Church

1.      The nature and purpose of the Church arises from the triune community of God Himself.

2.      God is creating the Church as the visible expression of restored fellowship between Himself and humankind. 

3.      The Spirit is bringing together different kinds of people into Christ, so that the Church may not only partake at the table of God’s triune fellowship, but may visibly reflect in Her being-ness, the communal life of God’s triune personhood.

4.      Integral to the meaning of the Church then, is the actual communal gathering of brothers and sisters in Christ, for fellowship with God and one another.  Through visible, actual, and practiced fellowship across social, cultural, economic, generational, and racial divisions, the Church reveals Herself as the Church.   

Sanctification

1.      Sanctification is the restoration of God’s image in us.  We are thus being restored to God’s likeness, which is the likeness of Christ.

2.      The Church is the place where God is restoring us to His likeness.  Restoration of fellowship with God and one another is the sanctification of our life in Christ. 

3.      Our sanctification is not a personal event or process then, but is communal in both process and objective. 

4.      We come together to receive one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.  This is the visible expression of the Church: Coming together for fellowship in Christ. 

5.      The Church is the place where God is restoring us of varied cultures, races, and social status, to Himself and one another- as one community of faith, as the family of God.  

6.      Conversion to Christ is involving a simultaneous conversion to one another in the Church. 

• Our estrangement from God and one another is symptomatic of our sickness from sin. 
• Jesus has therefore come as our Great Physician, and is calling the sick to Himself. 
• In the Church, Jesus is healing us by calling us together as different people- as one body, His Body. 

Ministry within small groups

1.      The capacity for differing kinds of people sit down at the same table together, lies at the heart of how Christians are sanctified into the likeness of Christ.  This is the visible expression of the Church:  Coming together for fellowship in Christ. 

2.      In receiving one another we minister to another, the life of Christ in us.  This is an expression of hospitality, which is integral to the meaning of Christian fellowship. 

3.      This ministry of hospitality, which facilitates our sanctification in Christ, is most visually and practically demonstrated through the natural breaking of bread together. The breaking of bread together typifies in the present moment, the messianic feast that is yet to come. 

4.      As a heterogeneous gathering of Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, the Spirit is forming us into a charismatic community of God’s manifold grace. 

5.      Authentic fellowship and ministry happens in settings conducive for a perceptual awareness of one another. 

6.      In the context of hospitality, fellowship, worship, and prayer, a mutual disclosure of ourselves can happen (Col 3:16). 

7.      Then as we learn to mutually minister gifts- expressions of Christ’s life and grace in us, we help restore one another back from falsehood and rather into the likeness of God revealed in Christ. 

Monte Lee Rice (© February 2007) 

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