New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

This chap­ter explores the sec­ond of two prin­ci­ples of the book: Com­mu­nity. As described here, it is not sim­ply a reg­u­lar gath­er­ing or a club, and it is more than just a group with things in com­mon. We can meet in a build­ing once a week for our entire lives with oth­ers who believe the same thing about Jesus and still fail to have com­mu­nity with them.

The authors remind us that Christ died for His peo­ple, and that doing so He was effec­tive in cre­at­ing com­mu­nity with a pur­pose. Notice the quote by John Stott that God’s pur­pose is to “…build his church, that is, to call out of the world a peo­ple for his own glory.”

Cul­tur­ally, we are a peo­ple of pride­ful indi­vid­u­al­ism, seek­ing “com­mu­nity” as a means to com­pare our­selves to oth­ers as we aspire to be hon­ored by them. We must fight against cul­tural norms and not let them shape our rela­tion­ships in the local church. The more we see the local church as a grace-established com­mu­nity, and not just a week­end rit­ual, the more we will desire to share our lives with those to whom we are covenan­tally joined. 

We must see that as believ­ers in Christ, our iden­ti­ties have changed. “I am a child of God, the bride of His Son, and the dwelling place of his Spirit. And this iden­tity is given to me by grace.” (p. 40) We are no longer indi­vid­u­als, but now are a part of a com­mu­nity. Our “being in Christ means being in Christ with those oth­ers who are in Christ” and “If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as dis­em­bod­ied Chris­tians.” (p. 41)

The “com­mu­nity among whom Christ promises to be present” is the cen­ter and the means by which God ful­fills His covenant promises. The dis­tinc­tion made between cen­tripetal (toward the cen­ter) and cen­trifu­gal (away from the cen­ter) reminded me of the begin­ning of New Life’s Vision State­ment: “We exist to pre­serve and pro­claim the gospel of Jesus Christ…” Preser­va­tion hap­pens in a more cen­tripetal way, while procla­ma­tion is more cen­trifu­gal. We must cul­ti­vate both. If we focus on spread­ing a mes­sage and are not uni­fied on the con­tent, accu­racy, or gen­tle­ness with which the mes­sage is deliv­ered, we err. Like­wise, if we focus merely on tak­ing care of “our church”, we may fail to con­sis­tently preach the gospel or make disciples.   

Do we prac­tice true koinonia? Are shar­ing respon­si­bil­ity and par­tic­i­pa­tion present and com­mon? How open are our lives to one another?

If the church is “God’s pri­mary mis­sion­ary method”, then we have to eval­u­ate, to some degree, the effec­tive­ness of our min­istry in light of our con­nect­ed­ness to one another.

The prin­ci­ples are good. Now let’s press on to Part 2, where gospel and com­mu­nity in prac­tice are the focus.

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