A fellowship beyond our needs.

A strange dichotomy. A divergent ego/id. We want the dedicated soul masseuse when what we really need is what is best for the fellowship. Selfless dedication that is beyond our comfortable conversants and in the realm of the hard-to-loves and social adversaries. We say age brings understanding but with it a calcified koinonia, we offer un-tethered visions that become the bane of the sojourner and the hungry fringe. Is it as easy as just expanding our circle of comfort, our sphere of influence, our area of concern beyond what we need and into what we are to do? Is there a calling beyond this, a fellowship beyond our needs? Oh harrowing 20’s you have come in with a roar and fanciful dreams of quasi-communist Corinthian/ Ephesian/ Philippian body/ vine/ families that whittle away with the years into fearful imaginings of comfortable American/ Franciscan/ Stoic quasi-mountain men. What house will stand when the walls are moved in or country thrive when its borders are drawn in tighter? Like a narrowing artery what nourishment comes to those who exchange the group ethic for the mantra of comfort and self-preservation? Will the vinedresser not send to the fire a vine that does not grow or offer nourishment to the vines nearby? We must trade our preferences and limitations, our fears and elephant memories, our lines of demarcation whether they be age, gender, or demeanor and with hands clasped and knees to terra consider ourselves nothing beyond our spiritual siblings. How terrifying to the adversary is a fully realized body of faithful fellowshipping friends resigned to their commissions and with every ounce and drop of collective sweat and blood influencing and rallying a terminal society towards the greatest atonement of all. Our minds, our souls, our hands, our feet must think, dream, grasp, and walk as one with the ministering body that will dream as one when they are handed their marching orders and are marshaled away from a vast pool of potential into a terrifying kinetic dynamo. Woe to the head who dreams in monotone or the man whose worldly means hinders his focus on the group ethic.

It must be beyond idealism and greater than pragmatism this that we seek. It must be a well managed structure that’s heart beats to the rhythm of the collective conscience and a space-walking vision machine that loves, lives, feels, and dies within the community of believers. A community that is somewhere beyond what we want, closer than we are probably comfortable with, stronger than any work of our hands, and more God glorifying than any ecclesia of the self or church of the clique.