Thanks for the comments! Your thoughts help me clarify and put into words what I'm trying to say. In keeping with the discussion going on VC, I'll post some more of my thoughts. These are new, to me, and still forming. Feel free to challenge them. I think discussion about these issues are healthy and needed in the Body...

Regarding individuals and community. Jesus created the church made up of individuals who relate to Him. When those individuals gather, a local expression of church happens. The local expression of the Church will only be as healthy as the individuals in it. She will only be able to carry out God’s mission as individuals learn to know, hear, and follow Him. God works through individuals to form communities, AND God works through communities to form individuals. The church cannot do one without the other. You can’t have a forest without trees, and you can’t have a local expression of church without having individuals.

So, I hope that we agree that the individual and the community need each other to exist. So, the question is, Where do we put our emphasis? You have said that you put it on the community.
I see it like a balanced see-saw. Tipped toward the individual you get individualism, relativism, strange interpretations of Scripture....Tipped toward the community you get conformity, commitment, accountability, and trust becoming the major issues, and you get self-appointed leaders “caring” for the community at the expense of the individual. The problem is that when the scale is tipped neither side is ends up loving God and each other. I think that a delicate balance must be maintained between the individual and the community.

When community is the main focus, the organization will become more important than the individual. Good intentioned leaders will make decisions that benefit the organization, at the expense of the individual. Often the leaders believe that God’s will and their will are the same and wind up destroying individual Christians. I’ve seen and experienced this, as many people have in the various new expressions of the Church. That is why many of us sought new expressions of church in the first place. The problem is that an emphasis on community demands that self-appointed, or elected leaders act on behalf of the community to manage, create, act as gatekeepers etc. to perpetuate the organization/community. 2000 years of Christianity has produced thousands of denominations, institutions and models doing just that.

In this delicate balance trust becomes the major issue. In your model you are asking people to trust you because you view yourself as a leader. Yet, Jesus did not trust men because He knew what was in them (John 2:24-25). Why would he ask us to trust each other? The language of institutions is “committment, accountability, and trust”, yet Biblically, those words are never directed toward other believers, only God. I find that interesting.... Accountability, and trust are reserved for the Father alone. I know it sounds crazy. It did when I first heard it too. Check it out for yourself.

To put it another way: If I look to you (a leader) to fulfill my needs will I wind up disappointed, hurt and frustrated? If I look to the community to fulfill my needs will I wind up disappointed, hurt and frustrated? In the end, we will fail each other because of our own flesh, and the leaders will become disappointed, hurt and frustrated when the individuals do not live up to their expectations, and fulfill their obligations. All I’m suggesting is that we were never meant to look to people and/or community for what God, and God alone, can deliver.

I believe that I can trust God to correct fellow believers in their journey. When we devise systems to “correct” other believers, we are really saying that we don’t trust God to do His job. It is when we don't really trust Jesus to be the head of his church, that we devise systems to keep it under man's control on his behalf. Which means much of our structures for body life today are actually built on unbelief. As you know, organizations take a lot longer to accept corrections, and can do tremendous damage to individuals in the meantime.

We could go even further and ask if it is “loving each other” to put expectations and obligations on each other at all. What happens when I don’t meet your expectations? Because you know that eventually I won’t. What happens when I fail to fulfill my obligations? You know, at some time I will fail. And, where does God tell us to put expectations and obligations on each other? When you ask me to meet the expectations and obligations of your idea of spirituality/leadership how is that not a form of bondage? I can’t help but think of the book of Galatians in this discussion, but I won’t waste the space here.

I will agree with Wayne Jacobsen when he says, “Life in God is a dynamic relationship. You can't mass produce it by behavioral objectives. You can't find it in religious tradition or embrace it vicariously through a charismatic leader. Life in God has to be lived in our own hearts.” To that point, the Christian life is individualistic. It is when we share the life in God together that community exists.

I simply think that we are headed in the wrong direction if we think that we can contain or sustain God’s movement by relying on people, no matter how wise or gifted. There is a myriad of ways to live together in community. God is a community, and wherever His presence is manifested community is built. The church is simply God expressing Himself through individuals that freely (yes, I believe freedom is good) choose to meet together. As God expresses Himself through us, a local expression of the church is created as we gather together.

The only two real directives that Jesus gave the Church is: Love Me and love each other. Could it really be that simple?