Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: Morning. Lord, we thank you for this time together, and we ask that you would guide us into all truth. Your word is truth. In Jesus' name, amen.

We're going to be looking at the 12th and final facet of *Conformed to His Image* and then move on to new topics. This is going to be a couple more sessions, and then we are going to be doing that. This one is on corporate spirituality. I began the book *Conformed to His Image* with relational spirituality because we come to Christ as individuals, but we grow in community. I bookend the book with relationships because relationships are the currency of heaven. It begins with relationships, and it ends with relationships.

So we're looking at the whole idea of corporate spirituality. The three things we're going to be looking at is the need for community first of all, the second aspect is the nature and purpose of the church, and then finally soul care: leadership, accountability, and renewal. As we put that together, I want to focus on first of all today the need for community as we reflect on this together. It has very real bearing on our lives together.

Because God has created us in His image, we are relational beings. As relational beings, we thrive best in community. We can't really grow alone. You need to have relationships in order for that to be effective. Consequently, you need to overcome a problem we have in our time: growing relational isolation. I find that there are a lot of reasons why people are more alienated, isolated, lonely, and disconnected, especially with other things amplifying it and becoming less and less analog and more and more digital as well.

There are lots of factors involved: the deterioration of community in the Western world, independence, self-preservation, control, privatization, avoidance of accountability, superficial relationships. These are all things that are consistent with a kind of disconnected relationship. We're not really close to others in that respect. There's a disconnection because we are busier than ever.

Think about this, this book came out in 2001, by the way, *Conformed to His Image*. Can you imagine how much more things have been amplified by technology? Even in the last five years, it's a noticeable, distinguishable change. Technology, our mobility, our media, entertainment, distractions are abounding. Travel, information overload. If that was true those many years ago, how much more is it now where it's becoming almost exponential in its nature?

When we think about this whole process, even time-saving inventions, I'm always amused by that because they actually addict us to urgency and performance and make us externally driven. One obvious example since I wrote this book, because it was in the year 2007 that a lot of technologies converged. About six of them all converged in that year and made it possible for things like Uber and other apps to be possible. All these things were a convergence of technology, and suddenly the smartphone came into being.

It's interesting that when I would go to conferences before that time, when people would have breaks, they would communicate with one another. Now, after that time, they stop communicating and they start doing this. Even in those relationships, it was very obvious. Everybody went off and was just doing this. Even in restaurants, in connections and meetings, it's astonishing how people allow this to trump the relationships themselves. If that was true then, how much more is it amplified because it's becoming more addictive because it's based upon a dopamine cycle? There's a conscious use of addictive behavior to actually cause people to become more and more immersed in that. It's intriguing.

Then there's another component as well. Our overemphasis on individualism is aggravated by our distrust in three areas in our time. First of all, a distrust in institutions. Secondly, in traditions, and that's been diminished as well, and in authority. Because of that, there is a growing movement away from any external authority, and people have become more autonomous. They're naming reality according to what they want it to be. Whether it comports with evidence, experience, or reason, it's trumping any external authority. It's the autonomy of the individual self that has become another issue that is growing.

Recapturing a biblical vision of commitment and community, you can't return to the past, but we can learn how to treasure relationships more fully and capture a transcendent biblical vision of relationships. To treasure people is becoming increasingly counter-cultural and counter-intuitive, but it's necessary for us to do this, making us more human and less defined by our external culture. So I'm going to be talking about the need for community. I'm going to be talking about the fact that it's both personal and corporate, biblical foundations for community, accepting the polarities, solitude, community, and ministry, challenges to community, and creators of community.

I want to start off with the idea that it's personal and corporate. I'm just giving you highlights and the big picture of this. It's all in *Conformed to His Image*. I tell people when they read that book is to read it slowly. I was just telling Sally yesterday when we were together that she has a copy of the book, and I told her to begin at the beginning, chapter one, with relational spirituality, but only read two or three pages at the most. It's like drinking syrup. It's very condensed. It's not hard to follow; it's just thick. You just read a couple of pages and look up the scriptures, and it's like a devotional thing.

As I said before, we come to faith as individuals, but we grow in community. Life in Jesus wasn't meant to be solitary and individualistic; it was meant to be shared and collective. That's the nature of it. We're going to be judged individually, yes. Romans 12 makes it clear, the judgment seat of Christ. But the community of faith is designed to prepare us for that judgment, for eternity. There are a lot of reasons and vehicles that God uses—accountability, spiritual gifts, and other things—to cause that to happen.

Now, we all have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Remember, there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. It's not a judgment of condemnation, but of rewards. But at the same time, the question is going to be what our portfolio is going to look like. Are we building treasure in heaven? The heart makes room for what it treasures. Building treasure in heaven, the idea that each one will be recompensed for his deeds done in the body according to what he has done. So it's individual there; we will give an account to Christ, and our whole lives will be manifested.

That's why I say it's pretty smart for us to live as if that might happen today. Live as if tonight were your last night. What if the next day you would be encountering Him? It's wise to do that because it's not a question of if; it's a question of when that's going to occur, and the time is brief. Emphasizing the corporate extreme, there are two extremes we can have: the corporate and the individualistic. The corporate and the personal.

What are called liberals or the theological left often focus more on social justice and cultural relevance. The danger there is that the gospel can be reduced to social ethics, to inclusivism and pluralism. The other side of the coin, the personal, evangelicals, the theological right, focus on justification and afterlife. The danger here is that the gospel can become privatized and socially irrelevant. In seeking to get a balance of both corporate and personal, my thinking is that it is both the social and the personal, that we are called to be active in the world but dependent upon God. We're called to have social righteousness or holiness, but personal as well, and service to others but also we're supposed to be devoted to Jesus.

So the foundations for community in scripture are clearly that of the Trinitarian vision of a God who is three persons and yet one being. This is a deep and profound mystery, which is utterly unique to the biblical vision. Nowhere else are you going to find this. It's the basis for unity and diversity, for the 'I' and the 'Thou' because there has to be more than one person for there to be love. If you just have a one-person God, then there's an 'I-I' relationship. Ultimately, only the scriptures reveal that He's three-in-one.

So you have the lover and the beloved and the love that flows between them. It's a deep mystery. You have the Father, the lover, the Son, the beloved, but then there's this third person that flows between them: the Holy Spirit. So God is a community of being. As a community of being, we see that He is the one and the many. He is the unity and diversity and He is the three-in-one. So that Trinitarian understanding is the realization that that's the basis for community because God is a relational being. He is a corporate collective dynamic, a social being.

When we are made in His image, you and I are relational beings. Because we're in His image, we're spiritual beings. So we have all these qualities of being bearers of His image, and we are to reflect that in our world. The Old Testament pointed to the mystery of God, "Let us make man in our image according to our likeness." There's plenty of material that makes it evident when you study this that the Old is in the New revealed, and the New is in the Old concealed. The idea is that it's always been there, but now the New unpacks it. "Come, let us go down there and confuse their language." So He is a corporate collective being. As made in His likeness and His image, we've been created for community with Him and with one another.

The idea of God as a covenant-maker and keeper is unique again in scripture. But the consequences of the Fall, according to the scripture, is the loss of that relationship, the loss of community. We were alienated from God because we chose to turn away from Him, and as a consequence, we were alienated from ourselves. That led to an alienation as well with others and even from the created order. All those fourfold alienations are now being overcome in the work of Christ. God's redemptive plan is to restore relationships and to bring shalom—harmony, wholeness, peace, reconciliation—to all things. First of all, our relationship with God, our peace with ourselves, peace with others, and even peace in the new world that He's preparing.

To accept the polarities, that personal salvation is intended to reconcile and renew all of our relationships. So it cannot flourish in isolation; it needs a context of community. Corporate discipleship should inform and supplement personal discipleship. In a way, we are building into one another, but it's a natural tendency for us to be pulled toward one side or toward another. We want to have, instead of isolation and individualism or institutionalism, we need to embrace the tension between solitude and community. "Let him," as Bonhoeffer put it, "who cannot be alone beware of community. And let him who is not in community beware of being alone." He's saying you need them both.

In a life of unity and diversity, of oneness and plurality, it's a reflection of that Trinitarian life as we meet together. Another concept of what community looks like is to look at what solitude means and what community means and how it relates to ministry. In my view, our whole spiritual life is an inside-out process where we start with devotion to Christ, which is our solitude. You're not alone, you're not lonely, you're not isolated; you're connected with Him. Solitude you can carry with you even into the public place, but you have a spirit of being with Him. Intimacy will energize and animate your activity. Devotion to the community and then third, devotion to the gospel is ministry. Community as I see it is the bridge that connects the two. It connects solitude and ministry.

Commitment to Christ with our solitude as we get to know Him better and we embrace the cross by losing our lives to find His. We discover that the key to finding life is losing it and dying to your agenda and becoming alive to His. This is a very important principle that Jesus never asks us to give anything up without offering us a better good. When He tells you to take my yoke upon you and learn from me and to give up this, that, and the other, to lose your life and to find Him, ultimately He's saying, "I'm going to give you far better treasure than that which you were going to pursue on your own," because we're wired for gain, we're wired for true profit. But we need to allow God to define what profit looks like.

As we embrace the cross, we learn to treasure the Godhead. The more we treasure Him, the more we practice His presence, we seek to make Him a part of our thinking and our practice and our relationships because the way you serve another person really should be seen as your service to Christ. So through personal encounter, through growing trust, wonder, and awe, and through God's love and acceptance of us in Christ, we learn to let God love Himself in us through His indwelling Spirit. There's a rich concept in which we are communing with Him, and we are in Him and He is in us. It's a deep and profound mystery.

To be committed to community, as growth in solitude of intimacy occurs, my view is that this is going to increase my capacity for being other-centered, so that the more intimate I am with Christ, the more other-centered I become. So it manifests itself in that experiential way. That's why true community is not a collection of just isolated individuals; it's a collection of people who have their solitude, their intimacy, a growing intimacy with Christ. Because the more you become close to Him... if we see it like a pyramid and you have two people here and you see Christ at the top, the more intimate you become with Him, the closer you become to one another. So the vertical relationship always is meant to enhance and empower and enrich the horizontal relationships with one another.

True community is indeed a dynamic interaction of people. They know they're accepted and beloved in Christ, and the more people grasp the security of their identity in Christ—and this is always a huge issue because remember I've told you before that you're only going to be defined by one of two things ultimately: by the world or by the Word. You have to decide which it's going to be. If the world defines you, then you have a problem because the world says, "What have you done for me lately?" The world tells you what you do defines who you are. But the Word says, "No, who you are should shape what you do."

So the only basis for security is to find it in God's vision of you and so allowing the Word to define you, that you're a child of God, that you are holy and beloved in Him, and to choose to believe that gives you an interior basis for becoming other-centered. Because if you are secure, significant, and satisfied in Christ, the more that flows over then to relationships, you don't have to milk relationships to get your needs met. But rather you can serve people; you can be a giver, not just a grabber. The more we know Him, the better we're able to actually empower and serve and enhance one another.

True community is not believers at large or a colony of hermits. It's a connection of people. It's a vital organism of Christ-centered people. It's never easy, but we're impoverished without it. The corporate life of the body of Christ is not an optional thing. The benefits of community provide a context for relational enrichment and commitment. Community provides a context for trust, love, and acceptance because you need others in order to sustain that, and we become the life of Christ manifest in us in Him. Remember this is the way He works. It's the Spirit of God using the Word of God through the person of God to accomplish the purposes of God. It's the Spirit of God in you who takes the Word, the truth, and incarnates it, so you become an incarnation of truth.

You become a living epistle. You become a fragrance of Christ. You become an authentic witness of the life to come because you're living in the power of the resurrected life. You're actually living in the power of the age to come. The more we allow that to incarnate itself in us and through us, the richer we can be and the more we can give without expecting anything in return. That's a powerful vision. We become secure and significant and satisfied, not because of how people are defining us, but because of how the Word and how the One who loves us defines us. So we can then have mutual submission out of reverence for Christ, and encouragement and accountability follow.

I find myself day by day being encouraged by various people, but I also need accountability. There are some people that I have to be honest with enough to where they watch over my soul. I have people in my life where I'm going to run things by and get their perspective on these things. Again, making decisions not just by myself, you need that. Forgiveness as well is a huge component, reciprocal confession under the cross. All of these are manifestations of community.

The benefits are vast because there's a context for physical, psychological, and spiritual healing, and nourishment in the life of scripture, meditation, and prayer. I think of all the people who have enriched me in that area, people who've enriched me in a corporate calling and purpose, clarifying my thoughts. Having people that I'm going to get wisdom from and counsel and encouragement has been critical for me. A love for the neighbor is an essential expression of the spiritual life then. It's a way of manifesting that eternal. So ministry and service, they are the byproducts of the intimacy with Christ.

When I think about how community provides a context for expression of unity and diversity, of guidance and sustenance and spiritual disciplines, of support for those in physical, emotional, and financial need, all of these are expressions. So it takes the spiritual and the principles of scripture and incarnates them. The whole spiritual life is an incarnate life. It's a life that's led under the lordship of Christ. It creates an environment of growth, an environment of transformation, and where we can celebrate one another's spiritual gifts as well.

I benefit from the fact that no two of us are alike. My parenthetically view is that each of us is a unique reflection of Christ. You will reflect and refract the glory of God in a way that no one else ever can or ever will, which is a lovely thought. So in heaven, there'll be no clone like that. Each one of you will be unique. Imagine a world, by the way, in which everyone you encounter will always have your best interests at heart, that they honestly really want what's best for you. It's going to be in a resurrected context. I'm increasingly homesick and world-weary, but I'm looking forward to that richness of what that's going to be like and how we're going to be layered by millions of people we haven't even met yet in Christ in a deathless, tearless, painless, sinless world, and be able to actually have this richness in a new creation, in resurrected life, in a resurrected cosmos.

I find myself becoming more longing for the ultimate community that the best of this world can sometimes hint at. The best relationships I've known are hints of better goods that I cannot really name, but they're there. Sally came over yesterday and brought Heather, and we saw *Enchanted April*. I don't know how many of you have seen that film, but I recommend it. It's an extraordinary film because it's about this villa in Italy. But it's so extraordinary because it's a special place where space is a magical place, kind of a healing place that's surrounded by God's natural beauty.

Relational restoration takes place there, so it's a kind of a hint of heaven. It's like the way things were meant to be, and it's a hint of better goods to come. The best things I've ever known, and I look back in my past at the best relationships I've known, those wonderful memories are hints of better goods that will come to us that we have not yet experienced, but it'll be more than worthwhile. It'll be even better than you can imagine because we don't have the capacity to see what resurrected life is like.

Each of us needs a rhythm of both solitude and community. You need a kind of a connection of both withdrawal and engagement, of intimacy and activity, being served by others and serving others. There's a kind of respiration that takes place, a breathing in and a breathing out. Personal growth as well as corporate growth. It's not an either-or, but a both-and. To the life of the believer, and then the ministry of evangelism and edification—E-squared I call it—which has to do with the idea that we share the gospel. Sharing the faith and becoming a person who manifests the life of Christ in a winsome way whereby we serve others, and also edification where we build one another up.

We're not called to be prominent in ministry, but to be devoted to Christ. So our solitude empowers our ministry. As I've said before, intimacy energizes activity, so that the more intimate you are with Him, the more your activity will be energized by the Spirit of God. So intimacy with Jesus, where you're connected to God, and community, in which you're serving and supporting others, both of those enhance their expression in which we are called to be engaged in the life of the body of Christ in this world.

Commitment to God naturally leads to commitment to people. Romans 12:1-2 talks about commitment to the person of God, so that we are to submit ourselves to Him and ultimately then to present ourselves as living sacrifices to Him. It's interesting then that that's followed by his description of the purposes of God in Romans 12:3-8, and then that entails the people of God. After that, he talks about what that looks like in terms of the relationships. It starts with the person of God, and then what are His purposes that we fulfill, and then that will express itself in the way I minister to the people of God.

Preparation for bearing fruit in ministry requires a measure of brokenness and contrition. There has to be something that's broken so that the soil can be prepared to receive the life of the seed. So it's broken to surrender, and these kinds of things are necessary in our lives in a painful world. But the nature of a community of faith, brokenness, contrition, and surrender are part of what produces the fruit in ministry. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

It's an interesting thing when I'm tempted to complain or to be overwhelmed by situations, I can choose instead to serve other people, and that takes my attention off myself and instead enhances the richness of my life, so that by focusing on the interests of others, then I can really discover the true life of Christ in me. When we are liberated from the bondage to the expectations and opinions of people, which is a great freedom, then the ironic result is that we become capable of serving them far better. If I'm defining myself by people's opinions and expectations, that's a dangerous thing. Rather, if I'm seeking to serve people but not be bound by their opinions or expectations, instead I can serve them because I'm really playing to an invisible audience of one instead of a visible audience of many.

The difference between a churchman who focuses on building the institution and a Christ-follower who focuses on building the body of believers. It's not so much of an institutional approach, but a personal embedded approach. Dallas Willard used the ABCs as a metric: attendance, buildings, and cash. That's not exactly the way you measure the kingdom of God. Nickels and noses doesn't do it either, and buildings, budgets, and body counts don't. You can't quantify the kingdom by those metrics of the world. It transcends those metrics. It's not an institution; it's an organization. The institution should serve the organism.

The fundamental threat to community is self-centeredness. Hell, you can see, becomes more and more isolational; it's self-centered. It's like the black hole of the self where the gravity of the self is so great that no light can escape. The vital builder of community is being other-centered. So heaven is going to be other-centered. relational. The best moments we've known in this world have been when we've given ourselves to other people and served them, and ultimately we discover that all of us benefit from that. It's not natural, though, for us to realize that's how we can serve others in ways that are profound.

The cost, the price, it goes against the grain of our fallen instinct for privatization and control. It is not simply a matter of being just me and God, but it extends to other people. It's never meant to be individualistic; it's always been meant, this life of Christ, to be shared in a community. It's meant to be revealed and expressed in the way we relate to others. So my relationship with Christ is going to be manifest and seen and made visible in the way I serve and love other people. Bill Smith years ago created this contrast between the modern worldview and the biblical worldview. The modern worldview in the West is much more individualistic. The biblical worldview is more of a communal or corporate kind of a vision.

The difference is between contractual and covenantal. A contract protects you from another person; a covenant commits you to another person, to the well-being of another person. It's a very different vision. The view of self is instead of being autonomous, it becomes interdependent. It's social, and you realize that you are layered by other people. Your view of relationships is instead of being contractual, again becomes covenantal and communal. The source of your moral authority, instead of being relativistic and self-constructed, becomes transcendent because it's established by God.

The reason for church involvement might be needs-related, but instead, a biblical vision is more relational, a give-and-take, another-centered approach. The more I give away, the more I actually possess. The highest virtue, instead of being self-esteem, is love. The approach to resolution of conflict, instead of negotiation and communication, is a moral approach, which has to do with the need for reconciliation. Instead of self-fulfillment, it's a self-transcendence. Getting beyond the weight and gravity of the self and being free to be transcending that by allowing the Spirit of God to live in and through me. Receiving forgiveness is a very different vision. survivalists; we are people who are supposed to thrive in relationship.

Larry Crabb had talked about the old heart of the flesh where bad urges come from. Speaking about personal problems, the worldly approach would lead to a disconnection from others where the basic life strategy is do what works for me and avoid what doesn't, and my final value becomes me. So it's a disconnection from others because it's a self-preserving dynamic. Am I enough? Will you cooperate with my agenda? So it's a disconnection not only from others but from the self. So I get what I can, and independence from God results from that. I'm going to depend upon myself. We can flip-flop back and forth between the old and the new very quickly and very easily.

You can walk in the Spirit, or you can choose to walk by the flesh. When you choose and become aware of that, you're only one step away from repenting of that, which means to turn back to Him. Here we have a different vision. The new heart of the Spirit is an option we didn't have before we knew Jesus. It's faithfulness through trials. My final value is God; He's the point of my life. My connection with others is related to my adequacy in Christ. If you are adequate rather than insecure, you'll be able to serve other people out of the overflow of Christ in you. Rather than having a deficiency modality, you have a sufficiency mindset.

I want to live for Him, and ultimately I find that my longings are going to be found in Him. The more that's true, my connection with God, I can believe He is that good and I can depend on Him for life. So it's a very, very different vision. Creators of community, as Alfred Adler wrote, "It will appear in the end that we have no problems in our lives but social problems, and those problems can be solved only if we are interested in others." William James wrote, "Give yourself to the higher vision of the inner significance of people." So even secular writers could grasp these fundamental concepts, but without the spiritual dynamics to empower you, it'll only carry you so far.

"We're not at peace," and this is this great statement from Thomas Merton, "with each other because we're not at peace with ourselves. And we're not at peace with ourselves because we're not at peace with God." Now that's good theology. It's a great statement. So again, we're not at peace with one another because we're not at peace with ourselves. But we're not at peace with ourselves because we're not at peace with God.

Once you have peace with God, that'll then produce peace with the self and then peace with others. That's why I talk about those three things in relational spirituality: loving God completely, loving ourselves correctly, loving others compassionately. Because the more I am defined by Him, the more secure and significant and satisfied I am. The more secure I am, then I'm secure enough to serve. I don't have to use people; I approach people out of the overflow of Christ in me. So it's not a deficiency but a sufficiency mindset. Having been justified by faith, we now have shalom, harmony, wholeness with God. We're no longer alienated from Him.

When I lose my life to Christ, the sweet surrender and self-denial in Christ, the more I do that, the more that's a basis for biblical community. When I lose my life in Him, I'm going to be more transformed to being an other-centered person, not so much absorbed by myself but being eccentric, living out of the center and reaching out to others. True community cannot be manufactured; it's the byproduct of being focused on the living God who then empowers us to love others compassionately because we love ourselves correctly because we see ourselves as God sees us. Finding our lives by losing them and finding His life instead. So we either walk in the flesh or in the Spirit, and we kind of train ourselves to become more spring-loaded to walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. That brings me to the nature and purpose of the church, and I'm going to stop here and see what your thoughts are. That's a lot. I know that.

I'm just giving the big picture. If you want more, there's a book called *Conformed to His Image* from which this is taken. By the way, it's kind of fun because my agent and I submitted a proposal to Zondervan concerning *Conformed to His Image*, and the proposal is that we do an abridged version—not to get rid of the other, but to have a short version of it—which I'm proposing to call *That I May Know Him*. It would be about 170 pages instead of about 570 pages. It would be much more accessible. Put the cookies on the lower shelf and make them accessible for people. The hard part is to reduce it that much, reduce it by 70%, and make it all coherent. But we have done a proof of context where it can be done. It's tough to do though. But I appreciate your thoughts on that because I'd love that to happen. So we're waiting to hear back from them. Yes?

Guest (Male): I think that's a grand idea. Having read *Conformed to His Image*, absolutely, it's changed my life. It's made me a better husband, better. Thank you.

Dr. Ken Boa: Thank you. You see, that's a nice endorsement. I have various groups that I take through *Conformed to His Image* as well, so I have these discipleship groups I do in Zoom and so forth like that. It is a kind of discipleship program, isn't it, Stuart? It can be used that way, and that's why there's a study guide and there's a video study as well.

Good. Well, we have just two more sessions on this book, and then we're going to move into new territory. I hope you'll enjoy where I'm going to take you. Lord, we thank you for your grace, your love, your compassion, your mercy. The fact that you have wooed us, pursued us, called us. You are the sacred romancer of our soul and you have purchased your beloved. You have pursued us, you have protected us, you have provided for us, and you are the source of our vitality. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.