Walking With God

I've been wanting this week to briefly review Walking With God, John Eldredge's new book and tying it to community.



In WWG, John opens his journals and life from a recent year and discusses how he walked with God in that year. He shows how he pursued God, how God pursued him, the battles, the conversation with God, etc. Though for years (decades?) I pursued my walk as one of accumulating knowledge, in the last five years or so I've come around, came from knowing much about God to knowing God. Conversational intimacy is possible, and John illustrates it (and the struggles with it) in his book. I've found story much more powerful at transforming my life these last few years, definitely more so than theology and theory. Hearing these stories (again in some cases -- I worked with John's ministry in the middle of the year recorded in the book) help me see how I can too develop a bond with God.

A little more than a decade ago, I learned a lot about church from a man named Ronnie. A few of my favorite quips that I use are from him. One I don't use so often that I recall hearing is that most churches mostly consist of people who know people who know people who know people that know God. In other words, churches too often consist in attendance of mostly people some distant from a personal relationship of God. Sort of like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon if you don't get the reference) except with God and relationships instead of Bacon and acting. Sadly, it is often more than six degrees. Now, must people in churches know something about God, often a great deal, but real relationship they are farther off.

There is some evidence that this wasn't the case in the first couple of centuries after Christ's visit to earth. In fact, since persecution frequently occurred, often it was tough to get into a church! One often came to know God first, before they were told a when and where. While short of practicing the same (such as Christians in China, India, and many muslim lands may need to practice the same), what if we did practice something closer to that? Do we lose something in the "attractional" mode of evangelism, where we expect others to join us then know God? What if we knew God, helped others to meet him, then included him in our communities?

And what if in knowing God, we followed his direction and guidance in forming community in the first place? Rather than follow centuries old traditions that began centuries after Christ (see the book Pagan Christianity for some documentation of it), what if we walked with God and let him guide us to community? In other words, what if we took Christ at his word? Look again and scriptures and see that Christ instructed us to love and to train and teach others. He said he'd build his church -- we have no such instructions to build a church. If we would just love and teach, and let God form the communities ...