YOU ARE PART OF A HOUSEHOLD...

'You are part of a household if there is someone who knows where you are today and who has at least some sense of how it feels to be where you are. You are part of a household if there is someone who moves more quietly because they know you are asleep. You are part of a household if someone would check on you if you did not awaken.

You are part of a household if people know things about you that you do not know about yourself, including things that if you did know you would seek to hide. You are part of a household if others are close enough to see you and know you as well as, or better than, you know yourself.

You are part of a household if your experience the conflict that is the inevitable companion of closeness - if someone else makes such demands on you that you fantasize about driving them out of your life. You are part of a household if you sometimes dream of running away, perhaps to a far country, so that you will not be so terribly well known. 

You are part of a household if you return from a long journey prompts a spontaneous celebration. You are part of a household if, when you avoid a party because of your anger, pride, guilt, or shame, someone notices and comes outside to plead with you to come in.'

This is the one thing we need more than any other: a community of recognition.'

Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For, p.153.

ACCOUNTABILITY

'As is the custom with girls, when they are dressing and adorning themselves, to look at each other's clothes in case there shall be any untidy or unsuitable thing, or something not in keeping with the other garments, so the Church of God, she who has descended from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband, is to look each member at the life and behaviour of the others, for fear that anyone might have formed a bosom friendship with an ungodly world...'

William Willams, The Experience Meeting, p.15.

THE CHURCH

'For people to keep away from each other in the same church (when there is every opportunity for meeting frequently) engenders a lack of love and extreme coldness; and Satan never seeks a better method of kindling these things just mentioned than to get us to neglect this fellowship with one another. The gardener has only to neglect visit his garden, and to refrain from weeding it, and it will be overrun with weeds in a few weeks; and the church of God need only keep at a distance the one from the other, and lack of love will grow like a root, and from it will come every sorry, miserable branch, and none can destroy it save God alone. But on the other hand, what love, what concord, what good intentions, what security and what protection there is a for the members of a church who do not neglect the gathering of themselves together!'

William Williams, The Experience Meeting: An Introduction to the Welsh Societies of the Evangelical Awakening, p.14.

CHURCH

'Loving your neighbors is much easier if you never have to deal with them. Living in the light of the gospel is much harder in community where people sin against you. Your neighbors know this and that is why talk is cheap. Experiencing a people who confess their sins against one another, repent, and forgive is foreign to the world. Communities that live in this way, transformed by the gospel, will not only have a good reputation among their neighbors, but also will point them to hope in Jesus. This is a community that has joined the mission of God.'

Brad House, Community, p.41.