We fed 12 people with leftovers today. Me, four interns, one volunteer fresh from a year of touring the world, our ministry team, and two fellow ministry leaders dined on pizza, beans and rice, peanut butter and jelly and chicken soup. Welcome to Mika’s weekly team lunch.

Since last November we have been seriously considering what it is to be a Christian community. So far we have decided it has to do with prayer, eating together, and mostly just hanging in there with one another even if you want to rip each other’s head off. Bonhoeffer says it much more eloquently- “ Where Christ bids me to maintain fellowship for the sake of love, I will maintain it.”

Like many ministries (and everyone else) we have had to recently lay off some of our team. The question arises- who is our community? How do we maintain that when salaries and jobs are involved? What really marks Christian community? The work of our ministry, Mika, is community development. It has become increasingly clear that if we are to develop the communities in our city, we need to be able to develop a community among ourselves.

So back to Bonhoeffer and my fourth time through his little gem- Life Together. I find myself in this passage: “He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

So instead of dreaming it was something different, instead of wishing the players were different or the lunch spread were something more, I choose to maintain the fellowship and moreover, to rejoice. At Bonhoeffer’s (and Jesus’) suggestion I “enter into that common life not as a demander but as a thankful recipient.” Thanking God “for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise.”

As I look around the table at our funny group, whom I never would have put together, I hear the Lord whispering, “You’re getting what you always wanted. It just looks differently than you thought.” And I am grateful.

What have been your experiences of Christian community? How do we maintain the fellowship?