Not community but Communitas

In the Michale Frost's book entitled "Exiles" he quotes Alan Hirsch who defines Christian communitas this way.

Communitas in the way I want to define it is a community infused with a grand sense of purpose; a purpose that lies outside of its current internal reality and constitution. It's the kind of community that "happens" to people in actual pursuit of a common vision of what could be. It involves movement and it describes the experience of togetherness that only really happens among a group of people actually engaging a mission outside itself. Communitas just "happens" when a society of believers commits itself to the grand purpose to that external mission.

Leslie Newbigin wrote this twenty years ago, "There are two moods in the church; timidity and anxiety. Timidity squashes our missional impulse. It causes us to withdraw from any grand purpose for fear of upsetting the delicate balance of conflicting ego residing in each church. Christians surround themselves with fellow church goers, so their only goal is to maintain equilibrium. The church's anxiety fosters its awkward reputation in the wider community.

Now for my brief thoughts. What would happen to the church in America if we would own with passion the the Great Commission (Our Co-Mission with God) with courage enough to act (follow our Mission)? Jesus knew what He was doing and communitas was exactly what the early Christ followers experienced than many of us in American churches may never realize.