It’s 9pm on a chilly-for-November North Carolina night, and I’m standing under a marquee with approximately 100 other people, mostly young couples and families. There’s a worship band on stage who are hitting their peak in the worship set. The sound guy is paying no attention to any peaks on his desk, as the music blasts from the PA. I do something I haven’t done for many months: I raise my hands in a corporate worship setting. I have a desire to express my worship more “fully”, and to experience the spiritual presence (closeness) of Jesus in a way that was more familiar before I immersed myself nine months ago in life in the Bruderhof, an intentional Christian community that has existed for over 100 years. Back under the marquee in North Carolina, as I raise my hands I don’t really “feel” anything different. I feel more of a fraud as I sing louder and put more energy into the worship, and the critical voices of this form of worship start to play in my head. All around me people are praising and worshipping passionately, and seem to be having that “experience” which is evading me. But I continue anyway, following the Pentecostal mantra to keep “pressing in” to God. All of a sudden I start to experience the presence (closeness) of God in the way of times past. This is expressed emotionally as a joy that both cries and shouts, and I feel that my spirit is being refreshed and strengthened increasingly with every new song sung, and it brings revival to a dry soul. When the worship time is finished, the pastor and leader of this tent revival movement gets up to preach a short and sharp message, calling people to repent and follow Christ, to which many respond.
To critics of the Charismatic movement of Christianity, the word "experience" sums up all that is wrong about that form of expressing a Christian faith. Having an “amazing” spiritual experience on a Sunday, which would usually include a moving time of worship and the expression of one or more spiritual gifts, but then living Monday to Saturday in much the same way as the rest of the world around them, is not the all-encompassing faith that Christ died for us to live. What matters is what we do on every day of the week, they might say. Besides this, they might add, many Charismatic or Pentecostal churches have got the “moving” worship time down to such a tight formula which taps just the right emotions, the true Spirit is all but gone. I had a discussion one day with someone at Darvell, the community in East Sussex where my family and I are currently living, about this form of worship. Their view was that this form of “Fireworks” spiritual or worship experience wasn’t for them. They described their preference for more of a “slow-burn” spirituality, and that oscillating spiritual experiences with a great “high” on Sunday was not a positive thing. It made me think of my favourite pastime of motorcycle riding. Going out for a good, exhilarating ride is only possible on the weekend – I don’t get the opportunity to do it every day. When I do go out on the weekend, I come back buzzing every time. The fact that I can’t have that awesome experience during the week doesn’t make me want to ride less, it does the opposite. I feel this is true also for corporate worship services that have an emphasis on an outward, spiritual encounter with Jesus. But regardless of the setting or style, the key dividing line between a worship time that is just “an experience” and one that is true worship is the focus - is it on God or on me? And as I was travelling back from the worship service in North Carolina, I wrote in my journal that as awesome as it was to have my spirit refreshed and revived, that alone is not enough to live the life God requires of us. It should lead to actions that implement God’s love in the world around us, and in ways more than just leading the lost to Christ.
We’ve now been in Darvell for 12 months and have experienced an annual cycle of life in this Christian community. As I wrote about in the last blog, we settled into community life remarkably quickly, and after a year we are well and truly embedded - it is hard to remember our previously frantic family life. I head off to work in the factory at around 7:30 in the morning. It can be 10 minutes later if my help is needed at home - no one is waiting with a timeclock. In fact, there is no formal work timekeeping whatsoever. People are trusted to do their share of whatever work role they’re given. If they are late there will be a genuine reason which no one questions, although of course good communication is appreciated - WhatsApp messages fly to and fro across the “hof” (site) all day, keeping the operational cogs of community well-oiled. At 8:30 Mum and the three kids walk the 100-odd metres to the school and nursery. The joy of seeing the kids in this school has not worn off after 12 months. The only occasional complaints from the kids are having to go out for the daily morning walk on the coldest winter mornings, but for Bruderhof educational and child-rearing ethics, this is a non-negotiable. At 12:20 the family meet up again in the dining hall for lunch, except our 2-year-old son who stays in his nursery group. Lunch is the main meal of the day at the Bruderhof, which is eaten communally in the dining hall. It is almost always a hot meal, and always including meat - scant few vegetarians around here (and forget about veganism). The meals do vary though: barbeque chicken, soups, lasagne, creamy pasta, filled rolls, salad wraps (plus a meat, of course). It was very rare to find a meal that was “only palatable” - after the first few weeks I had to reign in my 2nd (or 3rd) helpings, as I felt my trousers starting to get tighter. After the solid meal we head back to our apartment for “rest time”. This was a set routine for the kids especially to have a little quiet time before heading back to school, and the parents to do a few home jobs, or if they were lucky, to have a little rest of their own. Then it was back to work and school for the afternoon. At the end of the day all 3 kids were excited to tell of the adventures they had been on and things they had learned in their day. A light supper, usually toast, was eaten soon after arriving home, followed by the bedtime routine for the kids. After they were settled in bed, our evenings most often started with a communal meeting, which would always begin with singing. Singing is a core part of Bruderhof culture, and the kids who grow up in the community are sung to from day one, and singing is as natural as kicking a ball. Our evening meetings could include a topic for discussion, either spiritual or practical, or have a celebratory purpose such as a farewell of someone moving to another Bruderhof community. The community pastors need little persuasion to roll out the mobile beer bar (they run their own micro-brewery) and an array of tasty snacks. The meetings were usually less than an hour, which left time in the second half of the evening for inviting someone over to your apartment to hang out and have a 2nd round of snacks and drinks.
I have only feelings of love and respect for the people who make up this movement. But this doesn’t dampen the longing in my soul for a life that follows in Christ’s footsteps even more radically than the radical elements which they do embody. I pose a question to my workmates to prompt some spiritual discussion (one of the things I love about working in the Community’s business): What does it mean to “Follow Christ” vs to “Follow the way of Christ”? My contribution is that the former emphasises relationship, while the latter is a religious practise. We can be devout followers of Christ’s teachings but devoid of the primary fruit of Christ’s resurrection from the cross, which is relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit, and in a way that surpasses the relationship which the disciples experienced with Jesus in the flesh. Jesus said in John 16:7, speaking of His imminent crucifixion and eventual ascension to Heaven, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper (Holy Spirit) will not come to you.” In communal meetings, thoughts and prayers are shared often about God’s Kingdom, speaking of the church being an embassy of God’s Kingdom here on Earth, and praying that God’s Kingdom comes [in its fullness] soon. Jesus spoke many times about the Kingdom of Heaven in the gospels, but most often they were in parables. This makes the task of grasping the concept of “What exactly is God’s Kingdom?” and “How does it come to Earth?” a task that requires not only thoughtful study of those passages, but also the deeper, spiritual revelation that God gives to a seeking heart. This was one of the topics that consumed my bible study over the past few months as I wrestled with the challenges that Bruderhof life gave to my “conventional” Christian thinking. From that study time my answers to these questions are, 1. Having the culture of Heaven here on Earth, and 2. Having God’s reign here on Earth - His reign where the spiritual meets the physical, ie. [physical] healings, deliverance [from various forms of oppressive spirits] and heavenly languages [spoken by man]. One of the most powerful snippets from the gospels that jumped out at me as I searched for this was in Matthew 11, where John (the Baptist) is in prison, and hearing through the grapevine about the works of Jesus, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”. In other words, Is this the beginning of the reign of the Messiah on Earth, that has been prophesied? And this was Jesus’ answer: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” In other words, These works (healings, miracles, the good news preached) are the signs of my reign, the signs of my kingdom here on earth (which Matthew 11:12 confirms that Jesus is speaking of). As I don’t see these miraculous signs in my everyday life I might be tempted to accept a cessationist theology, but the more I search for people and churches living radically for Christ, the more stories I find of these very things happening today - in some cases with great frequency.
Part of the struggle of evaluating (discerning?) the biblical alignment of this close community’s common-purse expression of God’s Kingdom on Earth is recognising that many of the aspects of life in community (with the Bruderhof, specifically) align much more closely to the culture of Heaven than in many “conventional” church cultures and Christian lives that I’ve had contact with. I’ve talked about it in more detail in earlier editions of this blog, but the true equal valuing of all people, sacrificial love and service to one another, commitment to unity, and living without any materialistic concerns (to name but a few) are without doubt things that we (followers of Christ) will experience in the age to come. But there is, to me, a gaping hole in the expression of God’s Kingdom when it comes to God’s spiritual reign and authority having a real and meaningful impact on our lives here and now - the signs of the Kingdom that Jesus gave to John. And actually it’s not that there is no desire for greater expression of the spiritual reality of the Kingdom within the Bruderhof (including at the highest levels of church leadership), but I believe there are some things that prevent God’s spirit from moving more freely here. Now before I go any further I must emphasise strongly that the points I make, and the overarching thrust of this blog is not to criticise or in any way condemn the Bruderhof specifically, because actually these points apply in some way or another to every Christian church, and I might even say especially to Western, “conventional” (including Pentecostal and Charismatic) churches.
The first point is that the primary focus of the church (and us as individual disciples of Christ) should be OUTWARD more than INWARD. As I read and summarised all of Jesus’ words that He spoke himself (in the gospels), there were two very clear themes that stood above all others: To share the gospel with people around us (and beyond), and to care for the poor who are around us (and I’m happy to take this broadly, ie. the poor in spirit, down-and-out, as well as the financially impoverished). How does this relate to God’s spiritual reign on earth, and the miraculous signs of the Kingdom? The primary purpose of miracles is to show God’s glory and point people to Jesus! Miracles are not a magic cure-all to make all our problems go away and our lives more comfortable, they are for others to see the reality of God so that they might believe in Him. I don’t believe it is wrong to desire a miracle such as physical healing in our own bodies, but we must maintain a heart that when we receive it, God gets the glory and others get to see it (ref John 9:1-3). Similarly, it is not wrong that there is some time and inward focus on our inner self - our spiritual, mental and physical wellbeing. In fact I would say this is essential. But again the motivation of this inward focus should be that we can be stronger and brighter witnesses for Christ. Many of Jesus’ parables regarding the Kingdom of Heaven, such as the Parable of the Mustard Seed in Matthew 13, focus on its growth. The foundation of this growth is sharing the good news with the lost, calling them to repent and join His kingdom. Jesus has given us the task of seeing that happen, and it should be the primary focus of every branch and “flavour” of the Christian church. That is the starting point, and from there is where we disciple Christians to live their new life together according to the “culture of Heaven”.
The second major point, and the one that perhaps challenges me the most is that to be a true follower of Christ we must “die to self” in EVERY area of our life. The apostle Paul uses this language in a number of his letters, but probably most famously in Romans, especially Romans chapter 6. If you’ve been around church a while and heard a few sermons on this chapter and theme, you probably have some idea of what it means to die to self / sin / the flesh, and become alive in Christ. The challenge to me as an individual is, How much do I embrace “Not my will, but your will be done…?”, and how do I live and act to receive only the praise of the Father, and not the praise (or absence of mockery) of Man? On this latter point, when we as individuals come together as part of a church, it can have a huge effect on the culture of that church, not least in the way that we worship. Dying, in the biblical-fleshly sense, is a large theme of the tent revival ministry in North Carolina which I visited in November. When I visit the associated Sunday church, there is a LARGE sign in the entrance that reads, “DIE WELL”. The ministry has an emphasis on baptism, with a belief that there is a supernatural power in the act of baptism (ie, it is not just an “outward sign”), supported by many reports of deliverance (from oppressive spirits) and physical healings taking place for people getting baptised in their meetings. The pastors also advocate that baptism is one of the most powerful acts to spiritually catalyse “dying to self”, and encourage believers to be baptised again and again, as many times as is necessary to be completely “dead” to self, and subsequently fully alive in Christ. Dying to self is uncomfortable: speaking up and standing up about things that others will disagree with, or behaving in a way that others think is foolish, disrespectful or even irreverent.
The next evening (Monday) I went along to a small group meeting of approximately a dozen people from the church who were preparing to start a campus ministry at the local university. The meeting began with a time of praise and worship, and in that 30-40 minutes I discovered what it was like to worship intimately with a group of people who were “fully alive” in Christ. Despite having only a guitar, keyboard and cajon, this worship time was more powerful than the amazing, anointed worship band that was cranking under the marquee at the start of the trip. Every soul in that living room was worshipping God unreservedly and with abandon. Loud and passionate? Yes! Showy or “irreverent”? Not a drop. That was what worship looks like with people who have died to what people think about how they act, and can freely give God the kind of praise and worship he is worthy of. The kind that the Psalmist is referring to when he says “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth!” (Psalm 100:1). It is a very strong challenge, I might even dare rebuke, to those of us (myself included) who stand in a Sunday church service and “just clap along” to the praise songs.
What I have seen in some church cultures that I’ve witnessed is a manipulated theology that this form of praise and worship is irreverent, self-centred, hype-focussed and ultimately not pleasing to God. Worship in contemporary churches can absolutely be all of those things, but to say that “true” worship therefore is quieter, reserved and more “ordered” is to throw the baby out with the bath water. The aspect that made the worship I experienced in North Carolina spiritually authentic, powerful and uplifting was that whether with a large worship band or a simple trio of amateur musicians, it came from a group of pure hearts that simply wanted to praise God with all their being, regardless of what it looked like to anyone else. The very same can be said for the operation of the “charismatic” gifts in church (prophesy, words of knowledge, speaking in tongues etc). It is sadly true that these gifts have been abused and falsified in many church settings. But when Paul writes to the Corinthian church that they should “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1), for us to look at the irreverent use of these gifts and therefore say “Thanks, but no thanks” to them is an blatant rejection of what Christ suffered for us to have. Whether it is spiritual gifts, the way we worship, sharing the gospel, serving the poor, serving each other (fellow Christians), giving up the desire for material gain (for self), submitting to church leadership or the many other aspects of living out our faith, to truly follow Christ we have to die to our own version of Christianity which all of us formulate according to our fleshly weaknesses and our humanly-filtered beliefs of what it means to be a Christian. To truly follow Christ we have to be “all in”. If you say “I'll embrace Christianity except this part here”, you've just created your own religion.
All of this is very “spiritual” sounding, and likely difficult to absorb by anyone who is more practically minded, which is a lot of men. Men, mostly, and in a healthily motivated state don’t want to talk about a cause they believe in, they want to DO something about it. This is where we come back to the Bruderhof, because for the past 100 years (and counting) they have had an emphasis on DOING rather than SAYING. Instead of listening to a Sunday morning sermon on the importance of unity in the church, spending Sunday afternoon wondering how to apply it (practically), and then having mostly forgotten it by Monday, members of the Bruderhof live in unity with each other, day in, day out. Past generations of Bruderhof men have toiled and laboured to build community infrastructure for proceeding generations to be able to thrive without the hardships that they had to endure. A common man may struggle to understand a theologically heavy teaching or feel ill-equipped to wield a spiritual gift like prophecy or healing, but he can put one brick on top of another for the sake of his fellow Christians, or put food in the hand of a struggling neighbour. As I noted in my journal after the revival meeting in the marquee, our hearts being filled with God’s love and Spirit is not enough - that love must lead to action. What then, of my admonishment that to follow Christ we must die to self, worship with abandon and operate in spiritual gifts? There must be a meeting point somewhere of this “spirituality” with the “practical action”. I would initially put forward for contemplation that laying hands on someone and casting out a demonic spirit can be seen as actually quite practical in the advancing of God’s Kingdom. In fact every spiritual gift, if we take time to consider them, has a practical application. And for those people who just want to do something with their hands, like the kind of men I described above, they are not left out, matching perfectly with the spiritual gift of “helps” Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12. And they should see their “hands on” helping every bit as spiritual as the one who discerns or prophesies.
For the body of Christ to function in full health and to its full potential, it requires all of these gifts to be operating, which is of course why Christ wants to give us these gifts. But we must remember Paul’s words that we are to “desire them”. It is clear that they are not given if we do nothing and just go about our daily life thinking “God will give them if He wants to”. A part of “desiring” is not only asking, but being expectantly ready to receive them. This is not in conflict with Christ’s character of humility which we must follow, as long as we are in line with the purpose of those gifts being to build up the church. But what we find in many churches around the world, is a particular emphasis on certain aspects of following Christ, such as serving the poor, or a particular emphasis on certain spiritual gifts, such as prophecy, while neglecting other aspects and gifts. This is certainly true for the Bruderhof, and one of the big questions I wrestle with is this: When Paul writes about the church being a body in 1 Corinthians 12, is he just talking about the universal body of Christ, or is he also talking about distinct church bodies? In other words, is it part of Christ’s plan that some church bodies are strong in certain areas, and others are strong in areas that the first ones are weak? Or is it His desire that all church bodies are operating in all of the spiritual gifts, and embracing all aspects of living for Christ and advancing His Kingdom? It is certainly convenient to say the former, but I tend to lean towards the latter. I am sure that churches have particular and unique missional callings, for example in our church in Halifax, West Yorkshire, there is a particular missional calling to serve and build up the church in Moldova. But I do believe that if as Christians we all “died to self” in the way that I described above, fully and without reservation, there would be a lot more commonality with the way we live for Christ. We would also see churches of different cultures and “flavours” in closer alignment and unity with Christ, and therefore with each other, and God’s Kingdom would be advancing on earth ever more rapidly.
I have said many times that one could travel the world searching for the “perfect” church, one that embodies equally all of the teachings of the Word, and never find it. And indeed the very fact that the “one” was trying to find it themselves might be the first reason that they wouldn’t, regardless of the fact that it doesn’t exist. This whole journey of the past 12 months (and counting) has been about seeking to follow Christ more closely than I have in my previous years as a Christian. And intrinsically linked with that desire is to be living with or around other Christians who are already doing that, or at the very least share that same desire. And I condemn neither myself nor others for disrupting our “normal” and ”safe” life to seek it out. But at the same time I am realising with increasing certainty, that God calls us to commit and submit to a certain part of Christ’s body, and that most of the “seeking” should be listening and obeying. In the most positive way, our time at the Bruderhof has given me a new perspective on the power of a lifelong commitment to a church, much like a marriage should be, through highs and lows, working through problems with humility and with Jesus at the centre.
So that leads us to the ultimate question of this blog series: Is God calling us to the Bruderhof? The experience I had in those few days in North Carolina revived a desire in me to be part of a church where spiritual gifts are expressed more freely, along with passionate worship and people who challenge me more to reach out to the lost. With that burden in me, right now I cannot make the deep, lifelong commitment required to become a member of this church community. This doesn’t in any way negate all of the many Kingdom-centred aspects of an outlived faith present in the Bruderhof, which are weak in many other “conventional” churches (and which I have written about in detail in previous blogs). These aspects still challenge me deeply, and still cause me to seek God earnestly for the path that leads to “Well done, good and faithful servant” for me and our family. In January of this year, we said goodbye to the people that we had lived, worked, worshipped and socialised with for the past year. Despite the clear feelings that we needed to be out of the community to continue our seeking journey, I wasn’t prepared for the wave of emotion that welled up in me in those final days. Saying good-bye to people that you’d known for “only” 12 months should have been straight-forward and easy; it felt as difficult as saying goodbye to someone I’d known and loved for 10 years or more. At the very start of this journey, before we arrived in the community, my wife and I dwelt on Jesus words in John 17:22-23, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” This plea that Jesus makes in His final hours before He goes to the cross was a strong validation for the original “call” that we felt to live in community. I cannot be completely closed to the Bruderhof for our future, because as well as comprehensively demonstrating a solution for many of the problems of our current society, for me there is no greater expression of the oneness that Jesus speaks that I have found, or are ever likely to find, than in the Bruderhof.
