The Identity of The Hollywood Church: Genuine Community

June, 2008

by: Chriss Barksdale

• Hollywood Church

The Hollywood Church puts heavy emphasis upon community. And community is essential as it is founded in the Trinity. In the Trinity we find that our God didn’t create us because He was lacking in something. He already had a relationship of perfect unity and love. He created us to share in that fellowship and to bring us into it through the cross.

But even before the Fall we see community as essential. Adam was perfect and yet desired community. God didn’t tell him that he couldn’t have friends as animals—Adam just discerned it! We were created for community. There was a recent story I read of a family who left their dog at a pet hotel for a week and when they got her home and petted her, clumps of hair stuck to their hands. They called the vet and the vet said the dog was stressed by their absence and if they spent about two hours a day with her then she would go back to normal and she did! If a dog falls apart without community how much more us! You can’t experience true joy without community that is why you must share an experience with someone to be really happy (if you see a good movie you share it because that experience in watching the movie with someone is more enhanced than when it was just you).

But we were not just created for community but also saved for community so no man is an island. Even the commands of Scripture to the Christian are mostly in the plural not the singular! This is because the commands were meant to be fulfilled together not alone. I find many who struggle hear in Hollywood with alcohol or drugs think they can just pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and conquer it “with Jesus alone”. I admire the boldness but we have to understand that Jesus created us for community and saved us to be in community. We can’t move ahead without a community of believers around us, it is absolutely essential.

A recent poll concluded that Americans are among the loneliest people in the world. Before WWII there was no such word as “individualism”—we created that word! This mindset is even in the church today, as it tends not to be a community but a gathering of individuals. The City of Hollywood is no exception to this. It is very lonely; hence the nightlife, commuting, and building of 250 square feet apartments and condos. People commute to work alone, work in a cubical alone, commute home alone, and sit in their apartment alone watching shows about people living in community, alone.

Thus when the church catches a vision for community they become a light in a very dark and lonely world. And when it is full of diversity and a genuine community, meaning honest and humble, it will catch the eye of the watching world even more. This is why Jesus called us to be a “city on a hill.” A city on a hill is an alternate community, a city within the city, diverse. We want to have all the different people of Hollywood in our community so that they can see what Hollywood should look like! Think of the diversity of the Philippian Church in Acts 16 and how it started—a businesswoman Lydia, a slave girl who was poor and demon-possessed, and a blue-collar jailer with his wife and kids! Think about the diversity among the disciples— blue-collar fishermen and a white-collar tax collector. Thomas the skeptic and Judas the deceiver. John is calm and thoughtful and Peter is ambitious and rash. By God’s grace, the Hollywood Church has begun to take on the look and feel of a genuine community. The people are real, honest, and humble so that unbelievers are coming around us and wondering why we love each other the way we do. Please continue to pray that this will be an effective witness to the people of Hollywood! By Pastor Chris Barksdale