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I was recently thumbing through some stacked up, back issues of The Christian Century, the Christian magazine that I most trust and look forward to reading.  I ran across an article from the October issue entitled “Do You Love People?” by Peter Marty.   It was directed at pastors and the love that they should have for their congregations and the people within.  But I quickly discovered that this was a very good article that could speak to all levels of Christian love in community.

Peter Marty was reflecting on his many years of pastoral ministry and the ways that he was faithful and unfaithful in loving his congregation.  But along the way, he offered six observations of what genuine pastoral love is in the context of a congregation.  Again, this struck me as generally applying to Christian love in community, and offered a good and challenging set of standards for how to develop and assess these genuine loving relationships.  Here are his six points (I am rephrasing them to take them out of the Pastoral context to apply them more broadly).  

1. A person of faith in a Christian community must decide that the people in that community truly matter—that they are worth the personal energy expended in building relationships.  This is more than putting up with people in the community, but requires all people of the community to exercise the gift of compassion and be observant of the ebb and flow of human life among the people of the community.

2. We need to love people as they are, rather than as we wish they would be.  We can’t love people in the community of faith only if they agree with us on everything.  Conditional love is not biblical love, and toleration of another is not the warmth of affection.  

3. We should never confuse the gift of interpersonal skills with having a loving heart for people.  Interpersonal skills are important, and are exercised at all levels of the Christian community.  But they are no substitute for the reverence that goes with casting one’s lot among this “strange menagerie” of people called a congregation.

4. Love is its own reward.  Love cannot be exercised to accomplish anything  or get somebody to do something.  Love speaks to a depth way beyond this.  As Mother Teresa once said, “The success of loving is in the loving, it is not in the result of the loving.”

5. Love grows in depth over time.  Those people who have committed to a congregation for a long time, like a marriage, find that the love for the congregation and its people grows with each new phase of its life or each new event which solidifies relationships.  

6. Cherishing the people in the community of faith requires a longing for deep relationships.  Without this longing, a loving relationship will only be superficial.  This longing is a gift from God and is essential for us human beings to develop true loving relationships.

Since the beginning of Advent, we have placed an emphasis on the community aspect of our congregation.  These reflections by Peter Marty seem to be right on point and offer further truth and contemplation.