Community Service

Tonight, about an hour ago in fact, we signed our community commitment documents.  Now, that doesn't sound scary, but it means that, as far as the Law is concerned, I am now for seven months a member of a religious community.

Scary.

Before we signed those documents, Br Sam gave a brief talk about what this community was.  He used a saying of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - one of the most famous Christian martyrs of Nazi Germany - which probably warrants a bit of praying and thinking through:

'He who loves the community, kills the community;

He who loves the brothers, makes the community.'

It is so easy for any church community, or really any community, to forget that it does not exist for its own ends.  It exists for the people who are actually the heart and soul of the community.


A priest who has been staying with us for a while now told me his diocesan motto this morning at tea, and I think it hits the nail right on the head:

Changing lives

Changing Churches

for Changing Communities

Community life can be a remarkable thing, because it forces you to wonder what community outside the walls of a building is like, and whether the communities of which you have been a part were really communities at all.

The author of Ephesians 5:21 says, 'Serve one another out of reverence to Christ.'  How many times a day do I truly serve someone?  Have I ever stopped to think whether I have 'served' anyone today?  Tomorrow, I shall endeavour to do so.