Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2019

one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:12–13, ESV; for further reading on this subject, see Hebrews 10:25). Required to meet underground amidst persecution in the corroded atmosphere of the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s approach to Christian community emphasized the privilege of gathering. “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians … The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer,” he wrote in his book Life Together . The English poet John Donne famously wrote, “No Man Is an Island.” Reflecting on the nature of 17th-century European society, Donne expressed his reflections regarding the nature of life and humanity in an increasingly individualistic society. Birthed out of a season of intense sickness, Donne’s recognition of the unreasonableness of individual isolation and the inherent interdependence of humanity has struck a nerve through the ensuing centuries. Yet, Christian community possesses deeper roots than solidarity because of a shared cause or sanguine calls for unity. What Donne tells us we already know from Scripture. There is a profound reason the physical gathering of believers carries the effect that all humanity longs for but finds so elusive. This is not something that humanity can fabricate, because it isn’t a unity grounded in humanity, but it is a spiritual reality rooted in the person of Christ: individual believers united with Christ in salvation and indwelled by the same Holy Spirit, all bearing a common corporate identity. The New Testament is filled with the teaching of this common union in its fullest expression in local churches, whether the images of the body, a building, the temple, or a society (1 Cor. 12:25–27; Eph. 2:18–21). Community is not merely a relational goal but a particular approach to relationships built on the reality of union with Christ. Bonhoeffer says it this way in Life Together , “Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this …We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.” Even with remarkable individual diversity, as we belong to one another in gathering, just like everything else at Cedarville University, we live out community “for the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ.” SCATTERING The story of community does not stop when chapel dismisses. The community initiated by gathering in Christ at 10 a.m. propels the entire campus experience as we scatter. The goal of community is Christlikeness through discipleship. As Greg Ogden reminds us in his book Transforming Discipleship , “The scriptural context for growing disciples is through relationships. Jesus called the Twelve to be with him … Proximity produces disciples.” Proximity starts by gathering and permeates the entire course of a week. Students walk alongside faculty, staff, and each other out of the same type of experiences. In this setting of relationship within a common context, transformation