On Church Community

[This is something I wrote for our church's monthly newsletter]

Open Doors

When I walk through my neighborhood I often think about the fact that it’s called a community. It seems the primary reason for calling it such is that my neighbors and I happen to live in the same geographical location. Considering that so many of us don’t even know what our neighbors look like, let alone actually know them personally, in what sense is it a community? It seems closed doors are reflective of closed lives.

What then is the meaning of community for our church? Is our community based on the fact that we all congregate in the same location on Sunday mornings? True, being together in the same place plays an important role in community, but that’s only part of it.

Com- is a prefix that means together or with. Unity means oneness. Essentially, community means oneness with others. In one sense, our Christian community is a present reality. It’s based on our acceptance into the eternal family of God by his grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We’re united with believers everywhere because we’re members of Christ body, the Church.

But in another sense, Christian community is something that must be entered into through personal relationships with other Christians. These must develop for there to be oneness with other believers in the local church.

In his prayer to the Father in John 17, Jesus said, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Jesus prayed that his followers would know the same kind of relational oneness that he experienced with the Father. The Bible tells us that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. Jesus prayed that we would know the same kind of love for each other. And this love will be a powerful witness for a lost and dying world. Not only should we enter into meaningful relationships with one another for the good of the Christ’s church, but also for the sake of a watching world in need of salvation.

Sadly, our world doesn’t value what Jesus prayed for. Our culture in particular values the individual over community, self-reliance over humble recognition of our need for others, and the pursuit of one’s personal ambitions at the expense of sacrifice and service to others.

More married couples are foregoing having children, seemingly because they love their freedom from having their lives constrained by family responsibilities. People avoid making their needs known because they don’t want to be viewed as “charity cases” or lead others to think that they’re incompetent. Like contestants on “The Apprentice,” people, in order to get ahead in life, practice a cut-throat, do-whatever-it-takes-to-advance-yourself strategy even if it means trampling the trust and dignity of others.

These are but a few of the symptoms of a culture of self-absorption. But Jesus calls his followers to cut against the grain of self-rulership. We’re called to enter under his rule together; to strengthen, support, and love each other as brothers and sisters of the same family; and to build a community in which we serve one another and move out together in the world to help bring others into this community of Christ.

According to Jesus, anyone and everyone is our neighbor. We see the faces of our neighbors on Sunday at church. But do we know them? True, we’re already a community by virtue of our relationship to Christ. But we also need to grow in community—in oneness—because this was Jesus’ prayer for us. Let’s ask God to answer that prayer in the life of our church. And let’s be willing and ready to move into each other’s lives when God starts opening up the doors.