Loading…

The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love is unavailable, but you can change that!

In this Good and Beautiful Series book, James Bryan Smith helps us know how to live in relationship with others as apprentices of Jesus. "Apprentices of Jesus are not part-time do-gooders," he writes. "They live in continuous contact with the kingdom of God, and are constantly men and women in whom Christ dwells. They do not sometimes tell the truth, sometimes live sacrificially or sometimes...

The problem comes when the most important consideration, the dominant desire and the main focus of a community is its own success. Just as an individual whose whole life is focused on meeting his or her own needs becomes narcissistic, self-centered, ineffective and ultimately unhappy, so also communities can become so focused on themselves that they lose their souls. When that happens, the larger vision, the one that brought the community into existence, has been eclipsed, and the community no longer
Page 68