Christians have abdicated their duty to help others by delegating the healing of souls to professional psychotherapists. Christians do not realize the power they possess in healthy community to mend and nurture a broken soul.

In his book, Connecting: A Radical New Vision, Larry Crabb, a licensed therapist for over twenty-five years, admits to a drastic shift in his thinking. He believes that the resources of the church - especially in regard to healthy community life - have not been utilized as they should.

I am now working toward the day when communities of God's people, ordinary Christians whose lives regularly intersect, will accomplish most of the good that we now depend on mental health professionals to provide. And they will do it by connecting with each other in ways that only the gospel makes possible. (xii).

It is through the kind of relating to one another that Crabb describes as "connecting" that the power of God is released "through our lives into the hearts and souls of others" (5).

Exactly what is the power within us waiting to be released?... It is the actual life of God, the energy with which the Father and Son relate to each other, a set of inclinations put in our hearts by the Spirit and kept alive by his presence. It is a power that is most fully released as we develop a compelling and awe-inspiring vision of who another person is and what he or she could become because of the gospel. (66, italics his)

By sharing in the life of God through healthy community, the church possesses extraordinary resources to help others. According to Crabb, the deep, intimate, and transforming relationships fostered in a healthy church - connecting relationships - have more power to transform a person than expert counseling. Crabb insists that "[b]eneath what our culture calls psychological disorder is a soul crying out for what only community can provide" (xvi, italics his). Neither trained professionals nor simple biblical counseling - scolding sinners through biblical admonishment - are enough. Why? The problem is deeper than a damaged psyche. "Damaged psyches aren't the problem. The problem beneath our struggles is a disconnected soul." (xvi, italics his)

The human desire to connect with others is not a weakness. It is a mark of God's design in our lives. For this reason, we suffer greatly when connecting relationships are absent. We are designed by God for relationships. Indeed, we are patterned after the Trinity - a community of three persons sharing one life. God's very reason for creating us is that we might share in the joy of personal relationships, in other words, that we might connect with God and others. Connections are at the heart of who we are. The purpose of God's redeeming work in Christ is not simply to provide forgiveness, but to restore us to right relationship with God, others, and ourselves. In other words, to created a connected community.

A healthy community will rest in Christ's love, diligently seek for what is good, and expose what is bad or painful (Chapter 2). The order is important. Delighting in others as Christ does and noticing the good in others must always precede exposing others' sin and pain.

In order to experience this kind of community and release God's kind of power, we must die to self-centeredness - to our unwillingness to live in community and/or to appreciate the value of others. We must view others with the eyes of Christ and with a view toward the power of God's transforming grace in their lives. "When a vision of what another person is and could become because of Christ is the fundamental passion behind all our efforts to relate, powerful connecting occurs" (52). This way of viewing others brings great joy, life, and freedom to a community. It makes a community a place of healing.

When the gospel enables us to believe that something terrific is alive in another and that something terrifically alive in us could actually touch it, good things happen. We accept people for who they are, we grieve over every failure to live out their true identity, and no matter what happens, we continue to believe in what they could become without demanding that it happen on our timetable or for our sakes, or that we play a big part in making it happen. (53)

Crabb longs for the day when the church is a connecting community.

I want us to relate to one another, not as moralist to sinner or therapist to patient, but as saint to saint, father to child, friend to friend, as true lovers, with the confidence that we can help each other believe that, by the grace of God, there is something good beneath the mess. (xviii)

I also long for that day. I fundamentally agree with Crabb's thesis. His emphasis on the centrality of reconciliation and relationship is warranted. By grounding the transforming power of our lives in the perichoresis of Father, Son, and Spirit, Crabb allows us to share in the love, joy, and fellowship of the Triune God. And by sharing this, we become healing agents to others when we corporately reflect the shared life of God in our church communities.

Crabb certainly is not abandoning the importance of psychology. His view of a connecting community still allows room for the mind sciences. Instead of completely rejecting psychology and psychotherapy, Crabb is simply suggesting that clinical, detached, expert care has inherent limitations. In other words, without a connecting community, the best counseling falls short of completely healing a person. By integrating a person into the accepting life of a healthy community, his or her deepest needs are met and complete soul-healing can be accomplished.

Crabb presents a positive theological vision of what the church is and what it should be. His vision is not radical in itself. However, it appears radical in our fragmented and individualistic society. Recognizing the vital importance and healing effect of a connecting community is central to a church's identity. Grounding this connection in the life of the triune God keeps the church soundly rooted in orthodox theology.

Jesus came to build a church. The fruit of his work is cosmic and not merely personal. Crabb's vision corresponds to Jesus' community mission. Perhaps Crabb's biggest shortcoming is that his vision is too idealistic and not nuanced enough. A more nuanced view of community that demonstrates how authentic connecting/community occurs in the context of person-to-person relationships, small groups, shared activities, and major events would add much-needed texture to his argument.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2004