Community vs. Cause
Life is most beautiful when lived among tension. Sounds wierd I know but I believe it’s true. There is the tension of finding balance between family and work, work and play, speaking and being silent, choosing to live out your faith in the work place and/or home or choosing to coast, and the list goes on. Life is most challenging, rewarding and… beautiful… when these tensions are recognized. We’ve all seen what it feels like to “coast”, to go through life as someone watching from the sidlines, and it isn’t nearly as fun or adventureous or…. beautiful.
So, what does this mean for us in ministry or leadership or both. I recently heard a local pastor define the tension we often feel in ministry known as “Community vs. Cause”. In ministry, wether it be the church or para-church organizations (like say… Young Life) there exists the tension of living between the desire to experience “community” and the call to a specific “cause”. Perhaps no where is this tension more clear than when we read about the “cause” of Christ in Matt. 28:19-20 and the “community” of the early church in Acts 2:42-47. For hundreds of years since the establishment of the early church, the church (meaning the people of God) has wrestled with fostering “Acts 2 community” while also living out the “the cause of the Great Commission”. This wrestling match is indeed a tension and I believe it is beautful (although sometimes painful) to be a part of the people of God in this journey….
So, you may be saying to yourself, “self, what does this have to do with Leadership, Ministry or Other Things that Matter?”. I’ll tell you, Young Life and its leadership lives within the tension of “Community vs. Cause” as well. However, we also have the luxury of seeing clearly what we are called to as leaders. We in leadership with Young Life will always lean toward the side of “Cause”. We take very seriously Christ’s commission of us to “go and make disciples of all nations,”. Through pursuing jr. high and high school students we are GOING, and we prayerfully building realationships where God is honored and disciples are created. This is what we are called to!
Do we love each other as leaders and fellow laborers in this “cause”? Yes! Do we desire “community” as experienced in the early church? Yes! Do we focus on building this kind of “community” experience? Somewhat. Mostly though, we look to the local church to be our community, to be our place where we can be loved, cared for, and supported as we live out our calling to Christ’s “cause”.
So, we look forward to not standing on the sidlines, but instead engaging in the tension of living life and doing ministry within the tension of “community vs. cause”.
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