10. Although I sometimes experience a special feeling when I am with my spiritual community, the feeling is not what makes my community.

(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.) 

If you are part of a community, what do you value most about it?

What keeps you connected to your community when there is disagreement or conflict?

When you experience conflict in your community, do you see it as a problem to be fixed, or an opportunity to grow?

How do you sense that Jesus looks at conflict in our communities?

We often hear statements such as, “there is a real feeling of community in my church.” Clearly there is nothing wrong with experiencing a feeling of joy or love when we are in community. But we must ask whether there can there still be community even if there is no feeling. In spiritual communities, the answer is yes. In some ways, a spiritual community is like a family. 

Healthy families should certainly experience deep connectedness and joy, but every family will also experience conflict, disappointment, sadness, and even feelings of separateness. None of these feelings, either positive or negative, change the fact that this is a family. Families are bonded through biological connectedness. 

Spiritual communities are like families except that they are bonded by spiritual connectedness. A family member cannot say, “I’m no longer a member of this family”; their genes link them to their relatives. So too in spiritual communities a person should not say, “I am no longer a member of this community” simply because they are not experiencing the feelings they desire. The issue in that case is a matter of choice and discipline. 

By choosing to remain part of a community and being open to the Spirit’s guiding we make space for God to work in us and in the community. As has been said about marriage, we could say that God created spiritual communities not to make us happy, but to make us holy. If we approach our community only with a desire for happiness, we will miss the deeper purpose that God had in creating spiritual communities, which is to make us holy. 

Spiritual communities desire unity and peace among their members but are not afraid of conflict and choose to see it as an opportunity for good.