Thursday, April 19, 2012

Chicken, Meet Egg

At Eikon Church, we have been going through a series called Be Give Do: Committing to Community, looking at some of the practices that will help us to build community with one another. For each practice, we have talked both about what this is AND what this is not (as fleshed out in our community’s particular context).

BE
follow in the way of Jesus
share common values
be a public ambassador for our community

GIVE
commit to regularly contributing financially
serve others as needed
use your talents to meet the needs of the community

DO
spend time in community – both Sundays & beyond
hold others & be held accountable in love
challenge leadership in love

The first section I had the privilege to facilitate was Being a Public Ambassador. This Sunday I will be leading the discussion of Using Your Talents and next Sunday Spending Time in Community. I’m excited about all three of these topics because I feel like they flow into one another, and I want to use this space to lay out some of what we talk about both for those in our community who could not make the discussions, as well as those who are not a part of Eikon but have valuable insight to share with us.

I’m calling this blog series Chicken, Meet Egg because I feel like it is really difficult to determine what comes first. To invite others into community, we need to be experiencing it. But community has to start somewhere, so the same relational practices that help us invite people into community also help us form community in the first place. And to build authentic relationships, we need to be authentic – which means operating from our own unique talents, personalities and passions.

So, y’all come back as we look at what it can mean to spend time in community, using our talents to meet each other’s needs, and inviting others into the community we are experiencing.