Country Club

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     When I was a kid my family lived across the road from a country club for a few years, during which I was on the premises exactly once, on a sixth-grade field trip. In the years since, I’ve driven past the place several hundred times without turning in. Nothing against it, really; it just doesn’t appeal to me, so I haven’t sought any meaningful connection with the members, the people, by way of the place. If someone offered me a membership, I might accept. But then, if someone revoked that membership because I had ridden a loud and obnoxious dirt bike all over the golf course, I would say, “Whatever…” and move on to a better place to ride.

     It’s not unusual to hear a preacher mention church and country club in the same sentence, as in, “This church ain’t no country club!” I can recall several occurrences, maybe dozens counting radio preachers – might even have done it myself a time or two. If the preacher is using the verbal momentum well, the next thing you’ll hear will have to do with a call to commitment and sacrifice – in the church, that is, as distinct from the country club. If the verbal momentum is being used to the very best advantage, you might even get the idea there’s some accountability involved – in the church, remember.

     This week’s “Hey, Cobblestone” letter is the third in a series on “community,” one of the more ethereal terms we deal with on a daily basis. Last week we began listing the ingredients thereof – what goes in, what does not? The first ingredient was truth; true community adheres to truth that both precedes and supersedes the community itself; members of the community bond by committing to the same truth and seeking more of it together. This is what we’re calling “abiding community” – as distinct from “contemporary community,” which precedes its own “truth.” With a commitment to what has always been true, abiding community is off to a great start, and the recipe is coming together. What’s next? May I please offer a large scoop of accountability?

     For almost two decades I’ve kept a running list of the most over-used and under-defined terms in the English language, as measured by frequency and flippancy. It consists of no less than four and no more than seven, and certain terms float onto and off of the list. When I see and hear a term used a lot without much effort to describe what it means, and yet there’s some tacit agreement that we’re all working from the same definition – onto the list it goes. “Accountability” has never been bumped off; I keep finding reasons to challenge the assumptions attached to it. And in the past couple years, a newbie has come along – “community” – and rocketed into second place (right below “love”). So… in the space of one week’s letter, you and I are going to wrangle not one but two shifty/change-y terms and try to see them for what they really are. Oh, boy – we’ll need some Bible for that job!

     The exchange of letters between Paul and the church in Corinth is, in my humble opinion, the most fascinating study in community ever, surpassing even the wilderness experience of Exodus-thru-Deuteronomy. What happened in the wilderness took places as examples for us (1Corinthians 10:6), “us” meaning first-century Christians, and was written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come (verse 11). Without doing a bit of harm to Scripture, you and I right now can receive what was written down by Moses thirty-five hundred years ago, and what was written down by Paul to the Corinthians nineteen hundred and sixty-odd years ago. I said in a previous letter that we have to understand what community was like in Corinth to understand how Paul’s letters were received there, and gain the best understanding we can get. Take a look at Chapter Five.

     It’s a wack-o situation: a member of the church is having sexual relations with his step-mother. “Wha-a-a-a-a-a-t?!” you say. Yeah. Even more wack-o: the other members aren’t calling him out on it; in fact, they lay claim to this guy’s actions as one of the more progressive elements of their freedom as Christians. Paul gets the news by way of his coworkers in the gospel, and puts quill to parchment without delay: “Purge the evil person from among you” (1Corinthians 5:13).

     Paul wants this sexually immoral man booted from the membership of the Corinthian church, like right now. So what would that have meant for the offender? Before attempting to answer that question, let’s consider: What would it mean for an offender now? If someone within the membership of a twenty-first century Christian church ran afoul of what is acceptable, remained unrepentant, and removal from membership was in order, how would the person be affected?

     The man in Corinth would have been devastated. Christians had no power in 55AD – Christians were in Corinth precisely because they got persecuted out of Jerusalem. They were exiles, outcasts, weirdos. They believed their Savior defeated sin by taking it all on himself, and defeated death by dying. Who does that? To be outside the church in first-century Corinth was to be cast into hell-on-earth. The destruction of the flesh (verse 5) was a very real possibility.

     What about now? By and large, the loss of membership from a twenty-first century Christian church in America involves pulling into a different parking lot next Sunday. Sad to say, but accountability isn’t high on our list of priorities, by a good and reasonable definition of the term. It’s not totally absent, I’ll admit, but I don’t think we could honestly say that in our time, accountability is having the effect Jesus desires in his church. And I hope the Lord isn’t displeased as I go out on a limb and say…

     Until the loss of community becomes an unbearably horrible thought, it’s not true community.

     What if our commitment to Jesus and to each other were so strong, we couldn’t imagine any relationship like it outside the church? For that to even be desirable, we’ll need to understand that accountability is not a stand-alone ingredient; it’s a compound of other elements. I won’t pretend to have a complete list (still working on it), but we can be sure it includes at least these few: Humility – counting others more significant than ourselves (see Philippians 2:3). Mutual submission out of reverence for Christ (se Ephesians 5:21). Encouragement (see Hebrews 10:25). Nuance, through knowing one another’s stories (see the book of Ruth). And of course, accountability is nothing of the sort without adherence to the truth (see John 8:31-32).

     How, then, does accountability work? How is it applied? There could be a lot of details plugged into an answer to that question. In the interest of simplicity, I’ll say this: I agree to have expectations put on me by you; you agree to have expectations put on you by me; and at frequent intervals, we check to see if those expectations are reasonable and helpful, as measured by Scripture.

     In the 10-15 second definitions of community I asked for a couple weeks ago, accountability was a theme, though implicitly. I’m encouraged; I know it’s working among us. We feel the connection, and we know there have been and will continue to be very tangible manifestations of it. We understand that our relationships are not made by the place.

     So far, nobody has offered me a membership to a country club… anywhere. Nor has anyone suggested I purchase a membership. Just as well. Maybe they can see it in my eyes – dirt bike-riding kid from Darrtown… the golf course is bound to suffer. There’s a rule against that, isn’t there?

      

Grace and Peace (in the mix with accountability),

 

John