Ever been seen trying to run to the bathroom in your underwear early in the morning?

"I think this story illustrates what we all decide to experience when we walk into community. We all must accept that we will get caught in our underwear. The journey into community must begin with the realization that we will all be exposed, that we will all feel vulnerable, and that we will all be subjected to the raw truth about each other. There are reasons people don’t share who they really are. People tend to hide the truth about themselves because exposure would be both embarrassing and offensive…We fear telling others the truth because the truth is ugly and because rejection is likely. We hide because we believe we will be able to preserve more relationships by projecting and protecting a false image of ourselves. I get it. But in community you kind of decide, “I am going to be exposed, and I am going to see if people will still want to be friends with me, if they will still love me once they know me.”

“…All communities are formed ultimately in their underwear. Until you get to that place of exposure, shock, and acceptance you are not really community. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonheoffer called it the shock of disillusionment. He argued that life together is not possible until you confront and progress beyond that moment when you say, “This stinks; this is not what I signed up for, and this is not community.” In other words, we all enter into community with false expectations; the problem is we don’t know what they are. Until those false expectations about what community is and who we are as individuals within it are released, there is no chance for real community.”

“…Community is hard only because we like to hide and because we like to lie. Community is hard because we are (more than we like to admit) self-centered and arrogant…If you have no community in your life, you have no spiritual immune system. And isn’t painfully obvious when so many of Jesus’ people seem to struggle with their character, mental health, and integrity in the same way as everyone else? It is not that Jesus doesn’t make a difference; it is that the presence of Jesus often comes in the package of his people (his body), and we have tried to live more as individuals than as part of something.” (Brian Sanders)