Bill Hybels has said, “the church is the hope of the world.” To the extent that the church brings the hope of Christ to the world I agree. BUT, what happens when the church becomes less than that.
There are people among us who are carrying immensely heavy burdens and we are not giving them a safe, redemptive environment to unload their burdens and begin to heal so that God can begin to use their hardship and mistakes to help others going through similar situations.
Mark Batterson in the small group study, “Chase the Lion,” does an unbelievable job of dissecting the idea that certain stimuli impacts our guilt mechanisms. This is especially true if we don’t have an opportunity to come face to face with Christ’s grace through a redemptive community. So many people hang onto their guilt because of bad experiences with judgmental Christians.
Mark describes the story of Peter’s denial of Christ in a way I had never thought of before. Like Maslow’s dogs go crazy for a ringing bell, Peter could have reacted with guilt when he heard a rooster crow from then on, but Christ reinforces the idea of redemptive community when he reinstates Peter into the mission.  You know, “Feed my lambs…Take care of my sheep…Feed my sheep.” Peter could have continued to react in a guilty way to the stimuli of the rooster crow, but Christ changed all that. We all could be in the same situation if not for Christ reconditioning our guilt to grace. How does he do it today? He says the same things to us that he said to Peter, but today he says them through His Word and the church, IF we will be the type of redemptive community Christ calls us to be.