A while ago I was giving a talk about
covenant commitment to people interested in joining Antioch, the
Sword of the Spirit community here in London. We were nearing the end of
the course and I was supposed to review for the participants what the ceremony
would be like when they made their underway commitments. As I spoke to
them, the scene came easily to mind of that prayer meeting in Ann Arbor
40 years ago when the first ones of us, in what now has become the communities
movement, got up and said, one by one, “I want to give my life fully to
God and live as a member of the Word of God.”
I was 21 at the time and a bit nervous, but not
at all about whether I was doing the right thing. What the Lord had
been speaking to us about covenant relationship and what we had been experiencing
living as brothers and sisters made me sure that this was just the thing
I wanted to be doing with my life. I was nervous because I sensed that
this was a solemn occasion: that the Lord was doing something of massive
proportions in the world and that he had invited us, imperfect as we were,
to cooperate with him in it.
Since then I've had the privilege of living in
other communities, even helping to build some, and each time I've had the
same experience: that this business of living together in committed
relationships is normal Christianity – that it's the way he meant all of
his people to live, and that when people enter into it, even through all
the challenges and relationship difficulties and sometimes tears and sorrow,
it's not a bizarre way of life but eminently reasonable. It fits the human
person and calls out the best in us, in Christ.
In the early 1990s I had to be away from the States
and saw from a distance some of the hard times of division. By the time
circumstances allowed me again to choose where I should plant myself, I
looked at the various options and realized that what I had initially signed
up for on the day of my public commitment had stood the test of time –
to be in a long-term, covenant relationship with men and women who wanted
the Lord to use them, not as individuals but as members of a whole people.
I wanted to be doing what I had set out to do as a young man, and the natural
consequence was to fully invest myself again in the life of the Sword of
the Spirit.
For over 16 years now, I've been part of Antioch,
a member community of the Sword of the Spirit in London, and I experience
the same rich life that was such a delight to me (and opportunity for personal
growth) in the early days in Ann Arbor – a common way of life, a common
understanding of how to live for Christ with my brothers and sisters, a
common mission to be something for him in the world today. I don't experience
this as particularly easy and I don't think most of the brothers and sisters
in London do either. It's a stretch almost every day, a walk of faith in
the Living God. But I'm pleased to be traveling this road and thankful
to the Lord for his faithfulness to his word. He who invited us to this
life together is faithful, and he is bringing about what he promised. Even
now we see it growing and maturing from those first commitments we made
in our youth. One thinks of mustard seeds.May all the glory go to him.
