In Part 1 of this series, we exam­ined what the Bible says about com­mu­nity and learned that God cre­ated us for com­mu­nity, that the Gospel implies that we should live in com­mu­nity, and that we have explicit com­mands from God to do things that can only be mean­ing­fully done within community.

In Part 2 we exam­ined some rea­sons as to why we have failed to live in bib­li­cal com­mu­nity. We dis­cussed that many of us don’t know why we are sup­posed to be in com­mu­nity in the first place, that com­mu­nity is messy and uncom­fort­able at times, and that it requires real com­mit­ment to real peo­ple. All of these rea­sons make com­mu­nity hard, but they can’t be used as excuses.

Today I’ll offer four sug­ges­tions as to how we can live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church. It is my hope that these sug­ges­tions will be used by God to move us from the­ory into actual prac­tice. In order to live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church:

First, we must see our com­mu­nity groups as peo­ple com­mit­ted to God and each other – not as an event. Com­mu­nity groups in nearly every church are designed with the intent of fos­ter­ing love for and ser­vice to real peo­ple inside and out­side the church. But the rea­son why so many com­mu­nity groups are life­less is because those who attend the groups see the group as an event rather than a group of peo­ple. If you view your com­mu­nity group as an event, you will give no more time and energy to the group than the event requires. Fur­ther, you will likely attend the event as long as you feel like the event is ben­e­fit­ing you per­son­ally. But if you view com­mu­nity groups as peo­ple com­mit­ted to God and each other, then you use events to fos­ter deeper rela­tion­ships with God and oth­ers rather than think­ing that hav­ing and attend­ing the event is the main goal.

Sec­ond, we must under­stand that kids spell love “T-I-M-E.” And so do adults. For many years, fathers who idol­ize their jobs have argued that what their kids really want is qual­ity time, not quan­tity time. So they think that as long as they spend 15 min­utes a day or a cou­ple hours a week or one week a month doing it up big with the kids that that makes up for all the lost time. Well, it doesn’t. And the same is true in our adult rela­tion­ships. It is com­pletely irra­tional to think that we can spend “qual­ity time” with one another for 90 min­utes or a cou­ple hours each week and have deep rela­tion­ships with one another. We can’t. If we want to have mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity, then that means we are going to have to rearrange our lives to sim­ply spend more time with one another wor­ship­ing God, serv­ing our com­mu­nity, talk­ing, laugh­ing, cry­ing, and eat­ing together. There is no short­cut to deep relationships.

Third, we must have a pur­pose for all our gath­er­ings. Another big rea­son that we don’t live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church is that we haven’t defined clear goals for our gath­er­ings. Most lead­ers — myself included — have goals for our gath­er­ings, whether Wednes­day evening Life Group meet­ing, a small guys’ study, or time spent with the neigh­bors. But we don’t explain those goals clearly to the group, so nat­u­rally those goals often go unmet. If our com­mu­ni­ties are to be well-rounded, seek­ing to be all that God intended them to be, then we must be pur­pose­ful in our gath­er­ings. Oth­er­wise we will just default to what the group or group leader likes best, which might be hav­ing the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sions, serv­ing the com­mu­nity, eat­ing and laugh­ing, or what­ever else. All of those things are good and have their place, but with­out clear pur­pose we will neglect what makes us uncomfortable.

Fourth, rather than wait­ing for oth­ers, we must take the ini­tia­tive in lov­ing and dis­ci­pling oth­ers. Far too many Chris­tians are sit­ting pas­sively in the church body, com­plain­ing that they aren’t expe­ri­enc­ing com­mu­nity like they want to. Rather than wait­ing for some­one to “do com­mu­nity” to us, we need to take the ini­tia­tive and invite oth­ers into com­mu­nity. What we’d all like is for some­one to invite us to be a part of a cir­cle where every­one loves one another per­fectly, knows each other deeply, and serves together reg­u­larly. Rather than bemoan­ing the com­mu­nity that oth­ers seem to enjoy, begin invit­ing oth­ers into com­mu­nity with you. Choose to love those who are dif­fer­ent than you. Choose to do hard things together. Choose to wres­tle with Scripture’s mean­ing and appli­ca­tion to every­day life. Choose to for­give each other when there is sin and hurt and mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Because that’s what peo­ple liv­ing in bib­li­cal com­mu­nity do to and for one another.

These are just a few sug­ges­tions as to how we can live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church. My great­est encour­age­ment to you is that you sim­ply begin — begin hon­or­ing God by lov­ing your neigh­bor as you love your­self. We can fig­ure out the rest of the details together.

Feel free to offer your thoughts on our Face­book Page.

On Wednes­day, we began this new series by con­sid­er­ing what the Bible teaches about com­mu­nity. We learned that we were cre­ated by God to live as persons-in-community, that the Gospel implies that we are to live as persons-in-community, and that the only way to mean­ing­fully live out many of the com­mands in Scrip­ture is in com­mu­nity. In today’s post, I’m going to offer four rea­sons many of us have failed to live in bib­li­cal com­mu­nity with each other.

First, many of us don’t know why we are sup­posed to be in com­mu­nity in the first place. We hear it empha­sized a lot by our friends and church lead­ers, but we don’t really know why it is such a big deal. In his great book, Com­mu­nity: Tak­ing Your Small Group off Life Sup­port, Brad House writes, “Life­less com­mu­nity begins when we don’t have a clear under­stand­ing of why we are in com­mu­nity in the first place” (31). As a pas­tor in a local church who also leads a com­mu­nity group, I have seen this first­hand. Many com­mu­nity groups are life­less because the mem­bers don’t know why they are doing what they are doing in the first place. The answer to this dilemma is to under­stand from Scrip­ture why com­mu­nity is impor­tant — then teach oth­ers what Scrip­ture says about community.

Sec­ond, com­mu­nity is messy and uncom­fort­able at times. Even if your com­mu­nity con­sisted only of peo­ple who were in your exact same stage of life, shared all of your same inter­ests, and were in the same social and socioe­co­nomic brack­ets as you, com­mu­nity is messy because the peo­ple in the com­mu­nity have sin­ful hearts. In the local church, com­mu­nity is com­prised of all dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple — old and young, rich and poor, black and white, edu­cated and less edu­cated, and so on. When you add these dif­fer­ences into the already shaky equa­tion of sin­ful humans try­ing to love one another, you have a recipe for dis­com­fort. But one of the main dif­fer­ences between the church and the world is that our love for one another is based on God’s love for us. He loved us while we were His ene­mies (Rom. 5:8); we are called to love our broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ who have been rec­on­ciled to God and adopted along with us.

Third, com­mu­nity requires real com­mit­ment to real peo­ple — and many times that is incon­ve­nient. In my flesh, I want to serve myself, not oth­ers. But because I’ve been rec­on­ciled to God and oth­ers through the Gospel and called to obey God’s com­mand to love oth­ers, I’m called to lay down my life. Dying to myself can look like lis­ten­ing to and coun­sel­ing a friend regard­ing spir­i­tual mat­ters. It can mean I give up a relax­ing day off to help a friend with a project. It could look like going with­out cer­tain wants (or even needs) to help a mate­ri­ally poor friend. When we aren’t com­mit­ted to real peo­ple, God’s com­mands to us regard­ing lov­ing oth­ers are noth­ing more than the­ory. But when real peo­ple are involved, we are forced to think through how we will really live out God’s com­mands in the con­text of community.

These are just a few rea­sons we fail to live in com­mu­nity with oth­ers, and of course there are many more. Feel free to inter­act with this dis­cus­sion on our Face­book Page. Next week, I’ll offer a few sug­ges­tions as to how we can live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church.

“Com­mu­nity” is a word you will hear in lots of churches these days. If you don’t hear the word itself, you’ll hear syn­onyms (or syn­ony­mous phrases). Peo­ple talk about the need to “do life together.” We hear well-meaning Chris­tians admon­ish­ing us to “come along­side” oth­ers who need love and sup­port. Church lead­ers exhort us to do “life-on-life” min­istry with others.

The prob­lem with all of this talk is that very few of us have taken the time to con­sider what God’s Word says about com­mu­nity and to call peo­ple to that kind of liv­ing. Most of the words and phrases I men­tioned above are meant to cap­ture bib­li­cal truth about com­mu­nity, but they have become cliches that no one really under­stands any­more. We might be call­ing one another to com­mu­nity, but we haven’t done a good job explain­ing what we mean by that and why it is important.

I will have four goals for this blog series:

1. Explain what the Bible teaches about community.

2. Offer ideas as to why we have failed to live in bib­li­cal com­mu­nity with one another.

3. Offer sug­ges­tions as to how we can live in mean­ing­ful com­mu­nity with one another through the local church.

4. Encour­age you to live out God’s design as well as His com­mands by get­ting mean­ing­fully involved with a group of Chris­tians through a local church.

What Does the Bible Teach about Community?

First, the Bible teaches that God cre­ated us to be persons-in-community. Accord­ing to Gen­e­sis 1, God cre­ated us in His own image and like­ness. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have enjoyed per­fect com­mu­nity for­ever. Since we were cre­ated in His image, we were also cre­ated as com­mu­nal beings. If you’ve read Gen­e­sis 1–2, you know that in all of cre­ation, there was only one thing that God said was not good, and that was for man to be alone. We were cre­ated to enjoy com­mu­nity with God and oth­ers — includ­ing our hus­bands and wives, our chil­dren, other Chris­tians, and non-Christians.

Sec­ond, the Gospel implies that we are to live as persons-in-community. As we learned in Sunday’s ser­mon on Titus 2:11–15, Jesus died to redeem us from all law­less­ness and to purify for Him­self a peo­ple for His own pos­ses­sion. In mod­ern west­ern soci­ety, the Gospel is typ­i­cally preached and under­stood as an offer God makes to indi­vid­u­als rather than a work God does on behalf of the peo­ple He is call­ing to Him­self. Christ died for His church, and through His work we are rec­on­ciled to God and other believ­ers (cf. 2 Cor. 5:16–21; Eph. 4). Since this is true, we are to live as persons-in-community with God and with others.

Third, we have explicit com­mands to do things that can only be mean­ing­fully done through com­mu­nity. This past sum­mer, we went through the book of 1 John, which con­tains many com­mands that can only be mean­ing­fully lived out in the con­text of bib­li­cal com­mu­nity. For example:

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if any­one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little chil­dren, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (3:16–18).

“We love because he first loved us. If any­one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen can­not love God whom he has not seen. And this com­mand­ment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (4:19–21).

“If any­one sees his brother com­mit­ting a sin not lead­ing to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who com­mit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrong­do­ing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death” (5:16–17).

Many Chris­tians today don’t see any­thing wrong with “doing church” in their houses by pod­cast­ing their favorite preach­ers and lis­ten­ing to their favorite wor­ship music. Aside from obvi­ous flaws in that rea­son­ing I won’t point out here, there is no way for us to live out these com­mands if we are not mean­ing­fully con­nected to one another through com­mu­nity. If I don’t know my brother’s phys­i­cal, emo­tional, or spir­i­tual needs or his sins and short­com­ings because I don’t really know my brother at all, I can’t do what God com­mands me through John.

We could say much more about the Bible’s teach­ing regard­ing com­mu­nity, but these main ideas serve to sum up a foun­da­tional under­stand­ing of the idea. Feel free to inter­act with some of these ideas on our Face­book Page. In Part 2 of this series (which will appear on Fri­day), I’ll offer some ideas as to why we have failed to live in bib­li­cal com­mu­nity with one another.