No "I" in TEAM; not ME but WE

"In the Christian universe, the individual is NOT the vital unit of ethical meaning. For Christians, the most basic images, metaphors, and signs are

CORPORATE,

and the basic unit of ethical meaning is the Body, the community."

--Lauren Winner



(add this to the "how to know i have been "OFFICEd"... i cringed when i typed corporate)

One example

At the beginning of the film About A Boy, the central character, Will Freeman,
says:

In my opinion all men are islands. And what’s more now’s the time to be one. This is an
island age. A hundred years ago for instance, you had to depend on other people. No-one had
TV or CDs or DVDs or videos or home espresso makers. As a matter of fact they didn’t have
anything cool. Whereas now, you see, you can make yourself a little island paradise. With
the right supplies and, more importantly, the right attitude you can be sun-drenched,
tropical, a magnet for young Swedish tourists. And I like to think that perhaps I’m that kind
of island. I like to think I’m pretty cool. I like to think I’m Ibiza.

This is the creed of individualism. As the film progress, however, he learns that it is
not true. And the film ends with him celebrating Christmas with an associated
group of disparate people who form a community in which he finds belonging and
identity.

Not for ourselves alone

"As genuine human beings, from Genesis 1 onward, we are given the mandate of looking after creation, of bringing order to God's world, of establishing and maintaining communities. To suppose that we are saved, as it were, for our own private benefit, for the restoration of our own relationship with God (vital though that is!), and for our eventual homecoming and peace in heaven (misleading though that is!) is like a boy being given a baseball bat as a present and insisting that since it belongs to him, he must always and only play with it in private. But of course you can only do what you're meant to do with a baseball bat when you're playing with other people. And salvation only does what it's meant to do when those who have been saved, are being saved, and will one day fully be saved realize that they are saved not as souls but as wholes and not for themselves alone but for what God now longs to do through them."

- N. T. Wright (Suprised by Hope pg. 199-200)

unity without uniformity and diversity without division

We were made in the image of the triune God. We find our identity through
relationships. Just as there is both unity and plurality in God, so communal identity
should not suppress individual identity and individual identity should not neglect
communal identity. Through our union with Christ by faith, Christians are being
remade in the image of the triune God. The church should be a community of unity
without uniformity and diversity without division. --Tim Chester

Sixteen times as much

The Church, the whole body of Christians, showing Him to one another, is so important. You might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much.

--CS Lewis

Lewis on Community

"God can show Himself as He really is only to real men. And that means not simply to men who are individually good, but to men who are united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another....
"Consequently, the one really adequate instrument for learning about God is the whole Christian community, waiting for Him together. Christian brotherhood is, so to speak, the technical equipment for this science—the laboratory outfit."

Here's where we gotta be

Here's where we gotta be
Love and community
Laughter is eternity
If joy is real

--u2