The Safest Place on Earth – Chapter Two

Larry Crabb’s book ‘The Safest Place on Earth’ seems to be a welcome relief from the self-centred gospel prevalent in so many of today’s current literary releases. In fact, I’ve read nothing else that comes so close to my experience and current thoughts. There are things that Crabb touches on here that stand and defy everything taught about the Church.

This book is not about having your best life. It’s about having the best life that God plans for you. It’s not about being driven by a purpose. It’s about the struggles and the wrestling that goes with the ordained divine destiny on your life. You won’t feel warm and fuzzy after reading this book – in fact you may even feel more confused and disappointed. Where so much emphasis on leadership, managerial and advertising skills are placed on pastors it’s refreshing to see a text that deals with the formation of true spiritual communities amongst people whom Christ calls the Church.

Chapter Two – It’s Not Easy But It’s Worth It.
Chapter Two of Crabb’s book focuses itself on what the transference to a spiritual community undergoes. The current model of church with its ‘political campaigns and ego-driven agendas and building programs and church activities and inspiring messages’ needs to be aside for the ‘messy world of relationships’ and the cultivating of the individual’s journey in God. Crabb mentions the way I which current church community would deal with problems, namely in a way that makes us feel better, feel more comfortable, be inspired by good messages and relieving the pain with empathy. Spiritual community however would co-journey in the path of pain. It would be a place where it’s not about improving lives but one of knowing Christ glorified in every situation and making Him known in every area.

Quotes of Note from Chapter Two

• If the church has a future it is a future with the poor in whatever form – Henri Nouwen
  
• Brokenness is not a disease…It is a condition, one that is always there.
  
• We live in brokenness
  
• A central task of community is to create a place that is safe enough for the walls to be torn down, safe enough for each of us to own and reveal our brokenness. Only then can community be used of God to restore our souls.
  
• In His (God’s) sovereignly run universe, the unthinkable sometimes happens.
  
• God removes one source of joy and meaning that we were counting on to make our lives worth living, and replaces it with nothing.
  
• Without compromising His love and good purposes, God puts us in a box where all we have is Him.
  
• The path to the joy of God’s presence always leads through joyless isolation, when the part of us that most longs for connection is left painfully alone.
  
• Church, as most Americans define it, no longer holds any value for in my deep desire to experience more of God.
  
• I am willing to risk giving up my cultural definition of church and to try to define it biblically.
  
• We focus on using God to improve our lives than on worshipping Him in any and every circumstance. We think more about pathology – what can be fixed – than about the journey we’re on.
  
• (In) our approach to community is a failure to see dark valleys for what they are. They do not primarily represent problems to be solved, but are rather opportunities for spiritual companionship, for experiencing a kind of relating that is better and different from anything we’ve known before.
  
• For too long we’ve been encouraged by a solution-focused, make-it-work culture to flee human mountains when life gets tough. We’ve lost our focus on spiritual living.
  
• We need a safe place for weary pilgrims
  
• We need to become the answer to our Lord’s prayer, that we become one the way He and the Father are one.
  
• It’s time we paid whatever price must be paid to become part of the spiritual community rather than an ecclesiastical organisation.
  
• It’s time to build the church, a community of people who take refuge in God and encourage each other to never flee to another source of help.