A fugitive church

Grace and Truth

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Bare, white walls. Clean linoleum floors. Hints of disinfectant in the air. I rounded the corner on my way to Cameron’s room in the stroke unit of the hospital. To my delight and surprise, I saw Tom waiting in the hall while a nurse met with Cameron. I don’t know why I was surprised that people from church would pay him a visit.

After waiting in the hall a few minutes, Tom and I went in to see Cameron. In that sterile environment, church happened. Though Cameron’s stroke kept him from coming to church that Sunday, the church had come to his hospital room. After our preliminary greeting, I said half-jokingly, “I guess I should find a pulpit and preach, since it’s beginning to look like church around here.”

When I visited Cameron over the next few weeks, I found the church already there. Once I apparently arrived late and found Jaso and his friend gathered around Cameron’s bed—one playing the fiddle, the other plucking her banjo. I guess the order of worship that afternoon included a time for special music. And from the look on Cameron’s face, it was special music.

I stumbled into the “fugitive ecclesia.” That’s what Peter Dula, a Mennonite theologian at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va., calls it in his forthcoming book, Beautiful Enemies. Fugitive ecclesia describes what happens, writes Dula, “in the occasional intimacy of two or three.” While many theologians and church leaders laud the virtues of community, Dula wonders about “the space between the individual and the community.” He worries that we have forgotten about the messy work of companionship with two or three and Christ’s promised presence between them. Instead of looking for programs to create vibrant church community, we learn how to linger with two or three wherever fellowship happens—as in a hospital room. The fugitive ecclesia defies premeditation, calculation and scheduling.

Sometimes church just happens. Christ shows up with unexpected people in surprising moments. And the fellowship that happens in these moments is our communion in the fugitive ecclesia. As Jesus put it, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

Our communion in Christ’s Spirit is not a possession, something we can make happen with the right new pastor or a new initiative. Disciples aren’t magicians who wave wands and cast spells to make the Spirit fall and conjure a community. Instead, Christ is a beckoning presence, and we follow by stumbling into the alluring grace of the Holy Spirit, which comes with a companion, with the intimacy of two or three.

The resurrected Jesus appeared as a stranger to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24). The disciples welcomed the stranger as a companion. With preoccupied minds and after a long day of walking, the disciples lingered with their companion over a meal. Unexpectedly, their hearts burned. They sat overwhelmed with the communion of divine love.

But as soon as they could name it and claim it, Jesus disappeared. The love they felt was real. It was true communion. But it was fugitive—gone as quickly as it came. Without a warning, church happened.

Whenever I saw Cameron in the hospital, he told me who came by that day. My heart was strangely warmed as I noticed how his lists soon matched the church membership roll. Those are the “church attendance” numbers that matter. Many attended these instances of fugitive ecclesia. But usually this kind of communion slips from our gaze. We don’t notice. It’s fugitive, after all. Who knows where it might happen next?

Isaac Villegas is pastor of Chapel Hill (N.C.) Mennonite Fellowship.

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Additional Notes

Isaac Villegas is pastor of Chapel Hill (N.C.) Mennonite Fellowship.