James Bryan Smith. The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, and Demonstrating Love. (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2010)
Who?
James Bryan Smith is a professor, active church member, a family man, writer, but most importantly to him an apprentice of Jesus Christ. In his efforts to obey the great commission he has written a series called the Apprentice Series, The Good and the Beautiful Community is the third book in the series. The idea is that these books be used as a part of a curriculum for cultivating Christlikeness in local churches. He actually wrote them to meet the need Dallas Willard saw for such a curriculum. This particular book, as the name states, is about the nature of the Christian community, it answers the question, “what kind of community does Jesus want everybody to experience?” Smith's main influences appear to be Dallas Willard and Richard Foster. This is not a bad thing. The witness of the New Testament concerning the community of Jesus' disciples comes out on every page.
What and How?
The book, is meant to be a part of a forty week discipleship program at a church, designed to help people who are actually interested in being Jesus' students live under the easy yoke of their living Lord. This book intends, once again, to inform Christians to live with a Christian view of the church. Smith does this by starting each chapter with positive and/or negative examples of a particular principle of the Christian life. He then examines the false assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs that naturally lead to the negative examples. Once he demonstrates them to be wanting, he includes a section of correction. He calls this true and false narratives. He will explain the false, then replace it with the true. The true narrative always indicates Smith's careful Biblical exegesis as well as in depth knowledge of the master teachers of the Christian tradition. He finally ends each chapter with a section on soul training, exercises designed to connect the readership with the teachings of Jesus and help them replace their false narratives.
The Negative
The book almost gets off to a bad start because Smith has a tendency to use personal examples and one gets the impression that he is the hero of his stories, but this impression will be proven false if one sticks with the book. Others may not even notice this, I just know that as a teacher using personal examples can get old to students. Smith's focus is not himself, but rather his readership's relationship to the community of their living Lord and Saviour. This is my one negative comment about the book. Here on out we'll be looking at the positive contributions the book makes to our understanding of following Jesus together (as if there were any other way).
The Positive
The first positive is that in the first few chapters Smith deals with two competing and yet equally misguided views of the church. Some say the Christian church exists to inspire personal faith through evangelism and others claim that it exists to change the world through social action. The fact is, which Smith deals with, is that the church exists to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus Christ all throughout the earth. He quotes Dallas Willard's comment that “The true social activist is the person who lives as an apprentice of Jesus Christ in his or her ordinary relationships. The idea is that Jesus' students will act for the best interests of all of those around them. I would add that the true evangelist is the person who lives as a student of Jesus all of their ordinary relationships. But the dichotomy is effectively undone when the purpose of the church is exegetically discerned. If people learn from Jesus to live in such a way that people will see their good works and worship God, then the world will change and those who are trained to live such lives with Jesus will surely be converts.
The next great chapter was chapter four, The Christ Centered Community. In my estimation it is one of the greatest contemporary expressions of Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians and Romans 14. Christians may disagree about favorite teachers, particular religious practices, and even cherished ideas and doctrines, but it is the gospel that Jesus Christ is Lord and God raised him from the dead that unites Christians. Paul calls this doctrine, justification by faith. It is the bulwark of Christian unity, that all who call on Jesus as Lord (notice it does not say “say Lord, Lord to him”) will be saved. The criterion for Christian unity is to be centered upon Jesus Christ and what God has done through him and Jesus will take care of the rest. Heresies may need refuting, bad ideas will need to be treated as such, but brothers and sisters must be loved as such. The example from this chapter of the denomination that insisted upon a particular understanding of the phrase “means of grace” and ousted the author from a spiritual formation conference is telling. We need to fight to understand one another, especially when it comes to terminology. A non-biblical phrase is hardly a reason for schism unless the phrase carries with it a clearly anti-biblical meaning (not-unbiblical, the two are different). A Biblical example of different terminology is that between Paul, John, and James. Or Jesus and the epistolary literature. Paul speaks of justification by trust in Jesus, James speaks of justification by obedience rather than mere intellectual assent. But they appear to mean nearly the same thing, we must have an interactive relationship with the God who raised Jesus from the dead, meeting external criteria does not help.
Chapter five includes a marvelous couple of paragraphs about narcissistic reconciliation that are worth worlds of worth to those who act that way or who feel guilty because of people who regularly confess their sins of secret anger to the people they're angry at. The section is called “the forgiveness ambush.” It is worth the price of the book. Hopefully though, for those to whom the price is prohibitive (14 dollars is a lot to some), the author will make that portion available for free. It is simply too good.
Chapter seven, The Generous Community enlarged my understanding in a key way. Smith tells us that teaching people to be generous with their monies when they are at their spending, energy, and time limits will seem pointless and impossible. To teach generosity the church must first teach frugality. We need to buy what we need so that we can meet the needs of others. Smith's term is margin. Margin is the space created by being frugal and emptying our schedules of baggage so that we have time, money, and energy for others. I would add that it is the development of our talents and job skills so that they can be of more immediate use to others as well. With a margin there is room to give. The false narratives are those of God helping those who help themselves and scarcity. He points out that there is enough if people give and that God helps everybody, including those who help themselves and that those who have and do not help the have-nots will be in trouble. On the whole the chapter and the soul training section at the end are filled with sound advice.
The chapter on worship moves in a different direction that one would typically predict. When I think of the word worship, I think of how the New Testament reworks temple worship and the sacrificial system and makes them into the state of existence of people who have access to God by Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:1-10, Romans 12:1-2, John 4). Three excellent examples of this understanding of Christian worship can be seen in the last chapter of Let the Nations Be Glad: Second Edition By John Piper, chapters 8-10 of the Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, and an essay at daveblackonline.com titled enter to serve, leave to worship. Smith takes worship to mean the gathering of believers. In other words, worship is the community's experience with God through the liturgy. Once the difference in terminology is understood, the chapter is superb. He essentially deals with two harmful myths, that worship is for the individual's enjoyment and that worship is something God needs. God does not need worship, he is infinitely glorious, it is God's gift to us that we can worship. And worship is for the transformation of God's people so that they can act as his effective emissaries in the world around them. I hope many people remove these myths from their mental machinery so that worship services can become places of blessing rather than legalistic requirements or well shopped havens for personal pleasure.
The last chapter on writing a rule of life is extremely helpful, especially the principles of maintaining the rule, but making the rule maintainable and actually beneficial and asking the Christian community to help you make one.
Does it measure up?
Well, the aim of the book is to bring people over time into a certain understanding and practice of Christian community in relationship to Jesus. I read it really quickly to see if I would recommend it to others and be willing to read through it with a group. I can say that I would and will. It is very good. Presumably if somebody really takes the content seriously, as with many spiritual formation texts, they will come away with a deeper knowledge of Jesus and habits of heart and mind that connect their lives to him. I whole heartedly recommend it. Note: It has end notes, which I hate, but I cannot even count them against this wonderful volume. It is also tightly bound, clearly intended for multiple readings.
