**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/Christine D. Pohl|Christine D. Pohl]] # Living into Community ![[Living into Community Visual.excalidraw]] ## Book Overview ### About the Author Christine D. Pohl (1950–2023) was professor emerita of Christian ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary. She was a leading scholar in practical theology, best known for her influential work on Christian hospitality. Her earlier book *Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition* established her as a foremost authority on the practice of hospitality in Christian community. Pohl's work emerged from both rigorous academic study and deep engagement with intentional Christian communities. She spent over two decades interviewing practitioners and studying communities that practiced radical hospitality to strangers. Her scholarship combined biblical and theological resources with insights from sociology and practical wisdom, making her work accessible to both academics and practitioners. Pohl led the "Pastor in Community" project funded by the Lilly Endowment, which brought together pastors, community leaders, and professors to explore practices that sustain congregational life. ### Central Thesis Pohl argues that four interconnected practices—gratitude, promise-keeping, truthfulness, and hospitality—form the essential foundation for vibrant, sustaining Christian community. These practices are not mere duties or obligations but represent what grace and truth look like when embodied in community. When functioning well, they operate invisibly as the taken-for-granted dynamics of healthy relationships. However, in contemporary culture, we can no longer assume these practices are consistently affirmed, making intentional attention to them crucial. The book addresses a profound tension: while the quality of Christian community life serves as the most powerful testimony to the gospel's truth, building and sustaining such communities proves extraordinarily difficult. Many Christians long for deeper community but lack the skills, virtues, and cultural formation necessary to create and maintain it. Pohl identifies specific deformations—betrayal, deception, grumbling, envy, and exclusion—that undermine each practice and offers pathways toward restoration. Central to Pohl's framework is the recognition that these practices are deeply interconnected: hospitality requires truthfulness, fidelity, and gratitude; speaking truthfully becomes risky without commitment to one another; gratitude without truthfulness devolves into flattery. The practices reinforce and sustain each other when healthy, but deformations in one area threaten all the others. ### Why This Book Matters *Living into Community* addresses the gap between theological ideals about community and the messy realities of congregational life. While scholars have emphasized the church as an "alternative community" that can challenge secular culture through the beauty of its shared life, few have dealt honestly with the practical challenges of building such communities. Pohl provides a framework grounded in actual experience—drawing from the "Pastor in Community" project's extensive conversations with practitioners—that helps communities understand both what sustains and what destroys their life together. The book offers a theological and moral vocabulary for understanding community dynamics that goes beyond psychological or management approaches. By focusing on practices rather than techniques, Pohl connects contemporary challenges to the deep resources of the Christian tradition while addressing the specific cultural forces that undermine community today: individualism, consumerism, entitlement, and the loss of commitment. ### Readwise Highlights --- ## Chapter Summaries ### Part One: Grateful Hearts #### Chapter 1: Introduction - Four Practices That Sustain Community Pohl opens with a composite description of community breakdown—the betrayals, hardening positions, rumors, and gradual dissolution that plague congregations, families, and organizations. She notes that such meltdowns are common and that the costs extend beyond shattered relationships: the quality of Christian community life serves as the most persuasive testimony to the gospel's truth. Jesus explicitly linked his message's credibility to how his followers live together. The chapter introduces practices as the framework for understanding community life. Practices are "things people do together over time to address fundamental human needs." For Christians, they are also responses to grace, expressions of God's character, and the relational dynamics that make community possible and beautiful. The four practices—gratitude, promise-keeping, truthfulness, and hospitality—appear in every functioning community, though often go unnoticed until violated. Pohl acknowledges contemporary challenges: many people want community but on their own terms, with easy exits and minimal responsibilities. Cultural formation in self-actualization and individual success has not equipped people for the communities they claim to long for. Brief, intense experiences of bonding at retreats or mission trips are often mistaken for true community, which actually requires faithful people committed over time to shared purpose. #### Chapter 2: Grateful Hearts Gratitude operates at multiple levels: thanksgiving to God, gratitude as a life posture, and appreciation for others. The chapter traces the linguistic connection between grace (*gratia*, *charis*) and gratitude (*eucharistia*), arguing that if grace characterizes God, gratitude should characterize God's people. Karl Barth wrote that grace evokes gratitude "like the voice an echo." Pohl explores how ingratitude undermines community. Paul identified failure to give thanks as the root of human sin (Romans 1:21-23), and Luther concluded that ingratitude leads to a "whirlpool of vices." A "culture of complaint" spreads through communities and affects everyone, while undifferentiated dissatisfaction and grumbling undermine the energy needed to sustain community. The chapter introduces the concept of "spiritual pornography"—fantasizing about ideal communities while failing to appreciate present gifts. Kevin Rains's reflection on Bonhoeffer's *Life Together* illustrates how longing for perfect fellowship prevents recognition of actual blessings. Thomas à Kempis urged appreciation for small gifts: "If you remember the dignity of the Giver, no gift will seem small or mean." Gratitude becomes particularly striking in difficult circumstances. The chapter describes how gratitude can "pilot the soul through narrow channels" during grief, how Christian communities often help people "die well," and how thankfulness does not require denying misery or evil but trusting in God's faithfulness through sorrow. Contemporary challenges to gratitude include entitlement ("no gift can bring joy to the one who has a right to everything"), self-made individualism that resists acknowledging dependence on others, contractual relationships that make thankfulness seem irrelevant, and busyness that leaves no room to notice gifts. #### Chapter 3: Complications in Our Gratitude [Summary of complexities and tensions in practicing gratitude] #### Chapter 4: Deformations and Disruptions [Summary of envy, grumbling, and other deformations of gratitude] ### Part Two: Promises, Promises #### Chapter 5: Promises, Promises Pohl opens with the moral teaching her grandfather embodied: "Your word is your bond." This simple principle captures the essence of promise-keeping—that our words create obligations and relationships can depend on their reliability. She traces how promises create what Hannah Arendt called "islands of predictability" in the ocean of uncertainty that is human life. Lewis Smedes provides a central metaphor: promise-keeping consists of "tough fibers" that hold relationships together. Unlike love, which can feel temporary or contingent, promises represent love's way of binding itself to another person regardless of changing feelings. Smedes writes that promise-keeping is "love's way of being whole while it still grows into wholeness." The chapter explores how contemporary culture undermines promise-keeping: the emphasis on "keeping options open," distrust of institutions, celebration of personal authenticity over fidelity, and the belief that commitment constrains self-fulfillment. Yet communities cannot exist without people who keep their word. The biblical narrative is built on God's promises to humanity—covenants that structure salvation history and invite human response. Pohl distinguishes between different types of promises: explicit vows (marriage, ordination, religious profession), implicit commitments that come with roles and relationships, and the basic fabric of truthful speech that assumes words mean what they say. Each level requires integrity and creates obligations. #### Chapter 6: Living Between Promise and Fulfillment [Summary of complications in promise-keeping] #### Chapter 7: Broken Promises, Broken Community [Summary of betrayal and its effects] ### Part Three: Speaking the Truth #### Chapter 8: Truth-Filled Lives Pohl opens with the disturbing story of Ananias and Sapphira from Acts 5, where a lie about their financial contribution resulted in immediate death. The severity of God's response indicates that truthfulness is foundational to community—deception at the church's beginning would have corrupted everything that followed. The chapter explores multiple dimensions of truth. The Hebrew word *'emeth* can be translated as both "truth" and "faithfulness," suggesting that speaking truth and being true are inseparable. Pohl proposes the equation: "Truthfulness + Fidelity = Being True." Truth-telling is not merely about accurate facts but about the reliability and integrity of the whole person. Bonhoeffer's reflections on truthfulness provide crucial nuance. Truth is not abstract but contextual—what we owe in one relationship differs from what we owe in another. A child asked by a teacher about family difficulties at home is not obligated to expose family secrets. Truth serves relationships and must be spoken in love and with wisdom about context. The chapter addresses contemporary challenges including "photoshopping our lives" (presenting curated false images), "whatever it takes" mentalities that justify deception for good ends, and the erosion of trust in institutions and public discourse. Yet truth-telling remains essential: communities cannot function when members cannot rely on each other's words. #### Chapter 9: Complications [Summary of difficult cases in truth-telling] #### Chapter 10: Deception [Summary of lying, hypocrisy, and related deformations] ### Part Four: Hospitality - Drawing the Practices Together #### Chapter 11: Hospitality: Drawing the Practices Together Hospitality serves as the integrating practice that draws the others together. Thomas Ogletree's insight frames the chapter: "To be moral is to be hospitable to the stranger." Welcoming those outside our circle requires truthfulness about ourselves, fidelity to our commitments, and gratitude for what we have received. Pohl notes that hospitality is particularly revelatory—"we cannot keep up false appearances for long" when sharing life with others. Guests expose our pretensions, and hosts are challenged to genuine welcome rather than performance. Jesus appears as host, guest, and the meal itself in Scripture, and foundational texts like Matthew 25:31-46 and Luke 14:12-14 establish hospitality as central to faithful discipleship. The chapter explores contemporary challenges to hospitality: efficiency-focused lives that have no margin for interruption, homes as private spaces rather than places of welcome, the fragmentation of community that leaves us without extended networks of relationship, and fear of strangers amplified by media. Yet hospitality remains essential—communities grow by making room for others. Hospitality requires the other practices: truth about who we are and what we can offer, fidelity to those we welcome, and gratitude for the gift of the stranger. When these practices are deformed, hospitality becomes problematic—hosts may deceive guests, break implicit promises of care, or resent those they have welcomed. --- ## Key Themes and Highlights ### The Interconnection of Practices > "If we consider one particular practice, the necessity of other practices becomes apparent very quickly. When communities offer hospitality to strangers, they soon discover the importance of truthfulness, gratitude, and fidelity." The four practices form an integrated system. Gratitude provides the foundation—Christian community begins as response to grace. Promise-keeping and truthfulness sustain community through time. Hospitality expresses community by making room for others. Each practice requires and supports the others; deformation in one area threatens all. ### Deformations as Parasitic > "Betrayal depends on and perverts a larger commitment to promising, just as deception and lying are parasitic on some notion of truthfulness." Pohl reframes sins against community not as separate vices but as deformations of good practices. Betrayal requires prior trust to violate; lies only work because truth-telling is assumed. This insight helps communities understand that addressing deformations means strengthening the underlying practices, not simply condemning violations. ### The "Culture of Complaint" > "Once a 'culture of complaint' is established, it spreads through communities and affects everyone." Ingratitude often disguises itself as prophetic criticism, concern for excellence, or pursuit of vision. Yet undifferentiated dissatisfaction drains communities of the energy and hope necessary to sustain life together. The distinction between legitimate critique and chronic grumbling becomes crucial for community health. ### Community as Testimony > "The character of our shared life—as congregations, communities, and families—has the power to draw people to the kingdom or to push them away. How we live together is the most persuasive sermon we'll ever get to preach." Jesus staked his reputation on the quality of his followers' community life (John 17:20-23). This raises the stakes for how Christians treat one another—failures in community don't just hurt members but damage the gospel's credibility. ### Promise-Keeping as Love's Commitment > "If you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you will not abandon, then you are like God." Lewis Smedes's insight reframes promise-keeping from burden to identity. Promises are not constraints on freedom but expressions of who we are and what we value. The inability to commit reveals not sophistication but incapacity for love. ### Truthfulness as Faithfulness > "Truthfulness + Fidelity = Being True" The Hebrew *'emeth* encompasses both truth and faithfulness, suggesting these cannot be separated. Being truthful means being reliable, consistent, trustworthy—not merely accurate in individual statements but integral in character. --- ## Analytical Reading ### Main Arguments 1. **Christian community depends on four interconnected practices**: gratitude, promise-keeping, truthfulness, and hospitality function as the essential infrastructure of healthy community life. 2. **Practices are more than duties**: Understanding them as the embodied form of grace and truth—rather than mere obligations—transforms how we approach community building. 3. **Cultural forces actively undermine these practices**: Individualism, consumerism, entitlement, and the loss of commitment create hostile conditions for community, requiring intentional counter-formation. 4. **Deformations are parasitic on practices**: Betrayal, deception, grumbling, and exclusion pervert the very practices they depend on, requiring communities to strengthen practices rather than simply condemn violations. 5. **Community serves as testimony**: The quality of Christian shared life validates or undermines the gospel's credibility, making community building a matter of witness. ### Methodology Pohl combines multiple approaches: biblical and theological study of each practice, attention to historical Christian voices (Bonhoeffer, Barth, Calvin, Wesley, à Kempis), engagement with philosophical treatments, and grounded reflection on actual community experiences gathered through the Pastor in Community project. The approach is inductive—building understanding from particular stories and contexts rather than deducing principles to apply. ### Strengths - **Grounded in experience**: The book emerges from extensive conversations with practitioners, making its insights tested against reality - **Integrative framework**: Treating the practices as interconnected reveals dynamics invisible when each is considered separately - **Honest about difficulty**: Acknowledges that community is hard and that deformations are common, avoiding idealization - **Theologically rich**: Connects practical concerns to deep theological resources without becoming abstract - **Culturally aware**: Identifies specific contemporary challenges rather than offering timeless principles divorced from context ### Limitations - **Limited treatment of some practices**: Given space constraints, each practice receives abbreviated treatment compared to what fuller study might offer - **Western/Protestant focus**: While drawing on diverse traditions, the primary conversation partners and examples reflect this context - **Less attention to structural/systemic factors**: Focus on practices emphasizes what communities do together; less attention to how external structures shape possibilities --- ## Personal Reflection ### Key Takeaways 1. **Practices operate invisibly until violated**—this insight helps explain why healthy communities don't spend time discussing their practices while troubled communities are consumed by their failures 2. **The "spiritual pornography" concept** reframes chronic dissatisfaction as a failure of gratitude rather than a prophetic stance, challenging the self-righteousness of critics 3. **Promise-keeping as identity** rather than constraint transforms how I understand commitment—my promises reveal who I am 4. **Deformations require practicing toward**: addressing betrayal means strengthening promise-keeping, not just condemning betrayers ### Questions Raised - How do practices get transmitted to new community members? What forms of catechesis or formation are most effective? - What role do rituals and rhythms play in sustaining practices? How do regular liturgical patterns form communities in these practices? - How do we distinguish prophetic critique from grumbling? What makes legitimate challenge different from chronic complaint? - What happens when practices conflict? When truthfulness threatens hospitality, or promise-keeping requires betraying a larger fidelity? ### Connections to Other Works - **Dietrich Bonhoeffer, *Life Together***: Pohl draws heavily on Bonhoeffer's insights about community formation and the dangers of idealization - **Jean Vanier, *Community and Growth***: Opening epigraph comes from Vanier; similar concern with practical wisdom for intentional community - **Alasdair MacIntyre, *After Virtue***: Pohl builds on MacIntyre's recovery of practices as the context for virtue formation - **Dorothy Bass & Craig Dykstra's practices literature**: Pohl's work extends this scholarly movement into community-focused concerns - **Making Room by Christine Pohl**: Her earlier work on hospitality provides foundation for understanding practices and their interactions --- ## Reading Notes Read as part of exploring Christian community formation and practices. Pohl's framework of interconnected practices provides helpful vocabulary for diagnosing both health and dysfunction in communities. The honest acknowledgment of difficulty—that building community is often harder than the ministry communities support—resonates with experience. The distinction between practices functioning invisibly and practices violated visibly offers insight into why struggling communities seem consumed by process while healthy communities focus on mission.