Blessing Together
Part 4 of 5 - Being the Church Together
Why a beloved community does not exist for itself
TL;DR: If Essay 3 (Becoming Together) asked what the church helps us become, today’s essay (Blessing Together) asks what that becoming is for. Love does not stop with belonging or formation. Love matures into blessing, healing, justice, hospitality, and shared life for the sake of the world.
Love Eventually Leaves The Room
“A God on a mission is a God on the move.
And love is the primary and persistent intent of our God-on-the-move.
A robust missional theology is a theology of love.”
— Thomas Jay Oord
A church that is being formed by Jesus will eventually turn outward in love.
In the first essay (Beloved Together), I wrote that we are loved before we are useful.
In the second (Belonging Together), I wrote that we do not have to earn our place at the table.
In the third (Becoming Together), I wrote that belonging is not the end of the story. It is the soil where we become more fully human in Christ.
Now comes the next question.
What is all that becoming for?
If the church is loved by God, welcomed into belonging, and formed in the way of Jesus, then that love cannot stay inside the room. It cannot become one more private comfort. It cannot become a warm circle where we heal each other while the world keeps bleeding outside the door.
Love moves.
Love blesses.
Love becomes bread, presence, courage, repair, justice, mercy, and care.
A beloved and belonging community does not exist for itself. It becomes a blessing through love in action.
Blessing Was Always Bigger Than Us
“If we're going to impact our world in the name of Jesus, it will be because people like you and me took action in the power of the Spirit. Ever since the mission and ministry of Jesus, God has never stopped calling for a movement of "Little Jesuses" to follow him into the world and unleash the remarkable redemptive genius that lies in the very message we carry. Given the situation of the Church in the West, much will now depend on whether we are willing to break out of a stifling herd instinct and find God again in the context of the advancing kingdom of God.”
― Alan Hirsch
God blesses people so that blessing can keep moving outward.
The story of blessing begins long before the church.
God calls Abraham and Sarah and promises that through them “all the families of the earth” will be blessed.
The blessing was never meant to stop with one person, one family, one tribe, one nation, or one religious group. From the beginning, blessing was meant to move through a people for the healing of all people.
All means all. All nations. All people.
Michael Adam Beck and Stephanie Moore Hand call this the “Abrahamic Promise”: a vision of “all the diverse tribes of humanity living in a blessed communion.” They say the church is meant to be a “sign, instrument, and foretaste” of that future.
I love that.
The church is not the whole kingdom of God.
The church is a sign. A taste. A glimpse. A small community where the world should be able to see what God’s dream looks like when it takes on flesh.
That means a church is not faithful because it protects its own comfort. A church is faithful when the blessing it has received becomes shelter, courage, food, welcome, repair, and mercy for others.
Blessing is not possession. Blessing is participation.
We are invited to participate in the love of God that is already moving toward the world.
The Church as a Field Hospital
“The church cannot retreat into enclaves but must go out and heal wounds.”
— William Cavanaugh
The world does not need a church obsessed with its own survival.
The world needs a church willing to tend wounds.
Pope Francis once described the church as a “field hospital after battle.”
William Cavanaugh says the church must be found near wounds, not above them.
That image has stayed with me.
A field hospital is not a spectacle. It is not impressive. It does not exist for prestige.
It exists because people are wounded, and the mission of God involves healing.
And if the church is going to look like Jesus, then it has to care more about wounds than image. More about mercy than maintenance. More about people than institutional self-protection.
Cavanaugh says the field hospital church does not withdraw from the world, and it does not simply accept the world as it is. It creates “spaces of healing.”
That is a vision of what the church needs to look like in 2026.
The church is not called to stand at a safe distance and comment on suffering. It is called to get close enough to bind wounds.
Close enough to listen. Close enough to be changed. Close enough to risk its own safety for the sake of love.
Justice is Love with its Eyes Open
"Justice is what love looks like in public."
— Cornel West
When love grows up, it starts caring about what harms people.
Sometimes churches separate love from justice, as if love is quiet and personal while justice is political and edgy.
But Jesus never made that separation.
Love feeds people. Love heals bodies. Love notices who is missing from the table. Love tells the truth when power hides behind religion. Love crosses boundaries. Love asks why some people keep being wounded in the same places by the same systems.
If love never becomes justice, it becomes sentiment.
If justice loses love, it can become harsh.
But in Jesus, they belong together.
Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer write that a tov culture measures goodness and justice by looking to Jesus.
A church shaped by tov does not protect loyalty at the expense of truth.
It does not preserve the institution while people are being harmed.
It learns to nurture empathy, grace, people-first care, truth, justice, service, and Christlikeness.
That sounds like a blessing to me.
Blessing is not doing charity from above.
Blessing is love that sees clearly.
Love that tells the truth.
Love that refuses to let people be crushed.
Love that repairs what can be repaired and laments what cannot yet be repaired.
Who We Practice With
Changes What We Become
“No Christian practice done inside segregationist ways of living and thinking will draw us into our true strength in God.”
— Willie James Jennings
The church does not become a blessing by practicing love only with people who are just like them.
This may be one of the hardest truths for the church to receive.
We can practice worship, prayer, service, generosity, and hospitality in ways that still leave us untouched by people who are different from us. We can build beautiful ministries inside homogenous rooms. We can call it discipleship while never allowing our lives to be interrupted by the people Jesus keeps bringing near.
Willie James Jennings says the
“crucial matter today for Christian discipleship
is not what you practice but who you practice with.”
— Willie James Jennings
That sentence! Read it again!
Who is missing when we pray?
Who is missing when we make decisions?
Who is missing when we talk about justice?
Who is missing when we imagine the future?
Who is missing from our tables, our leadership, our friendships, our budgets, our grief, our joy?
A church can serve “the poor” as an idea and still avoid friendship with poor people.
A church can talk about diversity and still keep power in the same hands.
A church can say “everyone is welcome” and still make people feel like guests in someone else’s house.
Blessing together asks more of us than good intentions.
It asks us to practice the way of Jesus with actual people, especially people whose stories, wounds, wisdom, and presence might change us.
The Spirit Creates Togetheversity
“Togetheversity. There is unity, oneness, koinonia. There is also diversity.”
— Micheal Adam Beck and Stephanie Moore Hand
Pentecost is what happens when the breath of God makes a new humanity without erasing difference.
In yesterday’s essay, Becoming Together, I wrote about God breathing life into the dust.
That same breath shows up again at Pentecost.
The Spirit comes like wind. People from different nations hear the good news in their own languages. The miracle is not that everybody becomes the same. The miracle is that everybody belongs without being erased.
Beck and Hand call this “togetheversity.”
Together + Diversity = Togetheversity.
It is a strange word, but maybe we need a strange word for a holy mystery.
Pentecost is not sameness. It is communion.
Pentecost is not assimilation. It is the Spirit creating a people whose differences are gathered into love.
This is part of what Eastern theology helps me see.
Salvation is not only rescue from guilt. It is healing, communion, participation in the life of God. Theosis is not about escaping our humanity. It is about becoming fully alive in God, together.
And if God is communion, then the church should become more communal.
If God is self-giving love, then the church should become more generous.
If God is healing the world, then the church should become a living sign of that healing.
A little new creation.
A little new Eden.
A little taste of shalom in a world still aching for home.
Blessing Happens at the Intersections
“These congregations know the ‘glorious messiness’ of what happens when believers come together across differences.”
— John Cleghorn
The church becomes more alive when it stops avoiding the places where difference, pain, and hope meet.
John Cleghorn writes about churches that chose to live at intersections: places where race, class, sexuality, language, neighborhood, grief, welcome, and justice all meet.
That kind of church is not easy.
That kind of church is messy.
That kind of church can be uncomfortable.
It asks people to listen longer than they want to listen.
It asks people to share power.
It asks people to notice whose pain has been treated as background noise.
But Cleghorn also describes these communities as places where
“the wounded and the healthy, and the insider and the outcast meet.”
— John Cleghorn
That sounds a lot like the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus kept showing up at intersections.
Wells.
Tables.
Roadsides.
Shorelines.
Sickbeds.
Crowds.
Crosses.
He did not avoid the places where human lives were tangled. He entered them. He blessed them with presence, truth, healing, and love.
Maybe that is still where the church becomes most alive.
Not at the center of power.
Not in the protection of sameness.
But at the intersections, where love has to become real.
Blessing is Ordinary
“Becoming authentically and fully human is the evidence of being a true follower of Jesus. It means that the question we should ask is not, ‘Are you a Christian?’ Instead, the more important question is, ‘Are you becoming more fully human?’ The question is not, ‘Are you going to heaven when you die?’ Instead, the question is, ‘Are you living a fully human life now?’ The question is not, “How successful are you are avoiding the world?’ The question is, ‘How effective are you as a loving, transforming presence in the world?‘”
— Dick Staub
Most blessing does not look heroic.
Blessing looks like ordinary people making love visible.
Sometimes we imagine blessing in large, impressive terms.
Big initiatives. Big numbers. Big impact.
Sometimes those things are beautiful. But a church does not have to be large to be faithful. It does not have to be impressive to be a blessing.
McKnight and Barringer say tov is rooted in the ordinary. Goodness becomes a culture when ordinary people keep doing ordinary acts of love until those acts become normal.
Blessing happens when meals are shared.
When someone checks in again.
When a lonely person is remembered.
When a grieving person is not rushed.
When a child is safe.
When an elder is honored.
When someone with disabilities is not treated as an interruption.
When queer folks do not have to wonder whether their dignity is up for debate.
When migrants and strangers are received as neighbors.
When the church asks, “Who is being harmed?”
before it asks, “How do we protect ourselves?”
This is how love takes flesh.
Not always dramatically.
Not always publicly.
Often quietly.
One visit.
One meal.
One ride.
One hard conversation.
One apology.
One act of repair.
One open table.
One more refusal to let fear decide who counts.
Blessing Together
“This emphasis is directed primarily at the here and now, as Christ-embodying communities of active love in the midst of the world. All of creation is caught up in the restorative work. The mission of God’s people is not simply directed at saving people’s souls from a bad life-after-death into a good life-after-death, but it addresses and hopefully touches the injustice and violence around us—poverty, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, war, environmental destruction—where salvation, justice, and peace can merge.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci
The church is most itself when love becomes shared life for the sake of others.
This is where the arc of the series keeps moving.
Beloved together.
Belonging together.
Becoming together.
Blessing together.
The movement is not away from love. It is deeper into love.
Love receives us.
Love makes room for us.
Love forms us.
And then love sends us.
Not as saviors.
Not as heroes.
Not as people with all the answers.
As wounded healers.
As neighbors.
As people learning, slowly, to participate with Jesus in the healing of the world.
To become a people who ask, again and again:
Who is wounded near us?
Who is lonely?
Who is afraid?
Who has been pushed aside?
Who needs bread?
Who needs protection?
Who needs someone to stay?
And then, by the grace of God, to let love become visible.
Together.
Let’s Talk
Where have you seen love become practical in a way that felt like church at its best?
Who might be missing from the tables, conversations, and practices that shape your community?
What would change if your church measured faithfulness by how well it tended wounds?
Next in the Series
Being Church Together is a series about recovering the church as a beloved community of love, belonging, healing, formation, blessing, and shared faith in the way of Jesus. The heartbeat of the series is this: church is not meant to be a place where people learn to perform religion. It is meant to be a people through whom Christ’s love becomes visible.
Next is Believing Together. If this essay asks how love becomes blessing, the final essay asks how faith itself belongs in community. Belief is not an entry exam. It is something we practice, question, confess, and carry together.
“If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live life with who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone regardless of behavior to seek too and who collectively lived by faith to make the world a little more like Heaven would you be interested ’ ‘Hell yes ’ was his reply. He continued ‘Are there churches like that”
― Hugh Halter & Matt Smay
“Jesus, properly understood as shalom, coming into the world from the shalom community of the Trinity, is the intention of God’s once-and-for-all mission. That is, the mission of birthing and restoring shalom to the world is in Christ, by Christ, and for the honor of Christ.”
― Randy Woodley
“Ultimately we cannot eliminate enemies through violence—violence only multiplies enemies. The only way to eliminate enemies is to love them, forgive them.”
― Brian Zahnd
“For I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.”
— Walter Brueggemann
“Becoming authentically and fully human is the evidence of being a true follower of Jesus. It means that the question we should ask is not, ‘Are you a Christian?’ Instead, the more important question is, ‘Are you becoming more fully human?’ The question is not, ‘Are you going to heaven when you die?’ Instead, the question is, ‘Are you living a fully human life now?’ The question is not, “How successful are you are avoiding the world?’ The question is, ‘How effective are you as a loving, transforming presence in the world?‘”
— Dick Staub
I like the direction this question moves us in. Yet I can't help but feel sad that the question this ideal raises is always completely ignored. Carl Jung coined the expression educated sick people to convey the thought that simply getting the concept about what we should be does not make it possible for us to be that. And it really doesn't matter whether our description of what we should be is formed by an evangelical or a progressive Christian. It remains just a concept of what we should be.
How about you continue this wonderfully laid out series (I have truly enjoyed this series) by asking and answering the question: How can a human become more capable of loving than they are right now? How can we resolve the fears and the damage to our idea of ourselves that motivate destructive, selfish behavior in us?
If we only teach people what they should be but don't lift a finger to help them become that, how are we any different from the Pharisees whom Jesus called Hypocrites in Matthew 23?
I seriously grieve that the conflicts between Christians have completely ignored this question of how to govern the human condition and have been fixated on whose concepts of what we should be are correct.
Here's me praying that you will at least acknowledge that this question has never been addressed by the Christian world since the Apostles addressed it in their letters. The Bible actually has a great deal to say about this issue. The fact that we don't know this says something about our level of trust in God's ability and willingness to govern the human condition.