Don’t Try to Create Community
In our personal autonomy driven world, it’s easy to think of community as something that either needs to meet my needs or as a thing we have to find or create or manufacture. But the Bible gives us a better and more beautiful truth: as Christians, we are already part of a community, the body of Christ.
In our union with Christ we are drawn together and called to live those bodily connections out. 1 Corinthians 12 is just one of the chapters in the Bible that describes how we might do that; and when you read it through, in many ways the word “community” doesn’t even cut it. It’s not enough. It’s too simple.
In Philemon Paul talks about the “fellowship of faith”. He’s pointing at the reality that Christian community is bigger than friendship around shared interests. It’s bigger than the random connections made through geography or demography. Christian community involves deep connection that refreshes souls. It’s a spiritual bond that brings peace and hope and joy and thankfulness together for each other.
Sounds appealing? Well, the beautiful thing is that you are already a part of it.
You see, you can’t create community. Jesus has already done that and told us what it should look like. So we don’t create community; Jesus has already made us into a community. Our calling is to live out this spiritual reality together. It is to keep living out the dynamics of the community, not to create the community itself.
If this is all breaking some paradigms for you, don’t stress. Over the next three Sundays, we’re holding our Winter Let’s Talk series and we will be digging into what the Bible teaches about gospel-shaped community.
We’re praying every person in our church will come away clear on how God calls us to be a community that reflects His love. And we hope each of us will arrive at church not asking, “What can I get?” but “How can I build?” We hope by the end that each of us will turn up at church with a posture of construction, not consumption.
But we also know that a community is made up of individuals — each of us with our stories, our strengths, our blind spots. That’s why our Wednesday night Let’s Talk Seminars are focused on helping you bring your best self to the community Christ has placed you in.
On Wednesday 9 July, join us at church from 7.15pm for our Let’s Talk Seminars on “The ‘I’ in Community: Bringing your best self to community.”
We’ll begin all together before splitting into interactive seminars. You will get to choose one of the following:
Friendship with Jesus Transforms Our Friendships – with Steph Shumack & Soph O’Hearn. (How does Jesus shift our friendships from self to sacrifice?)
Building Community through Peacemaking – with David Coy. (Discover how the call to be peacemakers transforms our communities.)
Origins & Belonging – with Nicky Fortescue. (Explore how your family of origin has shaped you and how that impacts your place in the church community.)
I hope you will join us over these weeks as we seek to understand and live out the kind of community that reflects Jesus; because in Him, we are already one.
