Community is not the Goal

So I had one of those "so what" moments this week reading Leadership Weekly. I used to like Leadership Weekly a lot and mostly I still do, but every so often they come up with these odd trying-to-be-sensationalist headlines or articles. Like when REVEAL was released by Willow Creek. Before you knew it, Willow Creek was repenting of everything they'd ever done!

Same goes with the latest interview with Jon Trott, Jesus People USA. Trott makes the salient but obvious point that the pursuit of community can become its own goal. The point is that when community becomes its own goal it stops being community and become something else - something inward focused. An inwardly focused community is oxymoronic - in fact so is an outwardly focused community, because if its not outwardly focused its not community.

So what leads Leadership Weekly to take this self-apparent truth and trumpet it as the headline as if this veteran of incarnational ministry is rejecting community? I don't know, but it sure annoyed me! Actually, I do know and it annoys me how so much money goes into media that is US-based and simply recycles the sectarian politics that hamstrings the body of Christ in that country.

The goal by the way is: transformed lives.