3. Ensure that the life of your organic community is regulated. If you’ve been thinking that an organic community is about the cultivation of lovey-dovey mushed up and emotionally hyped sentimentalities, you couldn’t be more mistaken. An organic community isn’t about a group of people with similar interests and who speak a similar lingo cliquing together to live happily ever after. That’s called a club.

An organic community is a family of people who may be diverse in their cultures, worldviews and interests, but who have an express willingness to live in unwavering commitment in the ways of the Kingdom of God. They may have habits that get on one another’s nerves and cultural differences that confound one another, which makes it very difficult for them to live with one another, but they are nevertheless deeply committed to share life with one another to embody the reality of the Kingdom in the present.

This means that the people within this organic community are willing to embrace a set of values that are shared by all within the said community. These are also the very values that regulate the life they share together and how they relate with one another. Now, if all within the community are of almost a similar maturity (or lack thereof) in their faith journey, that’s a rather difficult feat to achieve. Thus, every community needs a person within it who is relatively advanced in his/her faith journey to steer and guide the community in terms of the community’s rule of life.

I suspect many people think that if they could find organic communities consisting of people who live in commitment to one another and to God, their spiritual vitality would be all fired up and they’d once again return to the “first love” experience. It’s a fallacy. An organic community that truly strives to live out the way of the Kingdom actually suffers. If you find that hard to believe, follow these suggestions I’ve given and go try them out and see for yourself if life in an organic community is all that pleasant as you’ve made it out to be. My experience tells me that proximity and intimacy in relationship spells trouble.

In the final analysis, you know what - it really is much easier to just be an institutional Christian. Inasmuch as you find it painful, it’s much less daunting a process than learning to live within an organic community which is committed to the way of Christ. The institutional way is the way that most Christians have chosen for themselves, because it is the way that enables them to live the religious life whilst still having every bit of freedom to live in almost exactly the way they most desire. If you think life in the institution is overly controlled and inhibited, try life in an organic community; you’ll most likely be horrified. It’s easier to survive the superficialities of the institutional church than the intimacy of the organic dimension of church.

We’re often complaining that life in the church institution is too superficial. But when confronted with the realities of the organic life of the church, can we actually take it? Is it something we actually want? If we've not been able to survive the demands of the institutional church on us, it's almost certain that we won't survive the demands of an organic community.

I could certainly share more on what an organic community within the institutional church looks like in concrete terms. But that's not really the point of this series. The purpose of this brief series has been merely to stir us to consider the realities of the church at the present moment, and to re-examine if our responses towards these realities have been legitimate from a theological perspective of the church.

One thing is for sure, whatever it is, and I've emphasised this multiple times in this writing - there is no such thing as a "churchless Christianity". It is theologically unjustifiable and untenable as a form of Christian spirituality, because it defies the most fundamental nature of God as a eternal and Trinitarian community. In other words, Christianity apart from the community that Jesus has instituted and which the Holy Spirit constitutes is no Christianity at all, maybe except to the one practising it and propagating hard to justify it.

I wish you all the best on your endeavour to survive church. A churchless Christianity? NO.