Life Community Church

Two-minute read.

Alan Hirsch wrote a book entitled; The Forgotten Ways in 2006. I hope that is not too long ago. Older books challenge me. I’ll bet many of you out there can understand.

In his work he talked about Anthropologist Victor Turner who studied various rites of passage among African people groups and came up with this term Communitas.

Turner defines communitas as what happens in situations where individuals are driven to find each other through common experience of ordeal, humbling, transition, and marginalization. It involves intense feelings of social togetherness and Belonging brought about by having to rely on each other in order to survive.

What are you saying here? you might ask… I am so lost with this Communitas stuff. 

I was as well having read this book almost 10 years ago. But please, stop and hear this as I deeply believe there is something in this matter that aligns itself with Christian Americana.

Communitas happens in Africans around the age of 13. Something draws these young adolescents away from home to begin the next step in life. And this transition will pull them into what we would see as survivorship from boys to manhood.

Oh, is that what all this is about? Some young African boys becoming men?

In some ways yes but let us be clear – there is more, much more for these boys to find than manhood. And this piece has much more even for us, the Christian Americana to pay attention to, if we will. 

To Belong is to Survive. We will need a lot more for us to see where this goes.

Several years ago, Life Community Church had the opportunity to, wait, that’s not what I should say. Let me try this again. Several years ago, God sent two African families to LCC. Within several weeks, our Micro Church fell in love with these families.

Over the next two years these two families, in the only way Africans can,  would care for us rather than us caring for them.  The more they shared with us, the deeper LCC began to see the depth and reality of their faith. To say how they inspired us would take a lot more time than we have right now.

But allow me just two thoughts, which we’ll come back to next week.

• Christian Americana needs to grasp why The Forgotten Ways, written by Alan Hirsch is so needed due to Connection with Communitias.

• Christian Americana needs to grasp this because To Belong Is to Survive.

Belonging brought about by having TO RELY ON EACH OTHER in order to survive.

Let’s jump into this next week.

 Blessings MC