In Community With Each Other

Community is an often-misunderstood concept. I think when people hear the word "community," they think of people hanging out, yucking it up, and having a good ol' time. Or maybe, if they grew up in a real churchy environment, they might think of accountability partner whose job is to ask them how they are doing in their battle with their particular sins. However, biblically speaking, community means something much, much more.

Community is at the heart of the Christian vision for who our God is and who we are. Historic Christianity says that our God is just one God, but He exists in a divine community of three persons. Genesis 1:26 tells us that in the beginning, God (singular) said, “Let us (plural) make humankind (singular, literally “man”) in our (plural) image, after our (plural) likeness”. The story continues, “God (singular) created humankind (singular, again literally “man”) in his own image, in the image of God (singular) he created them (plural), male and female (both people together constitute His image) he created them.” What we have to see here is that the one God creates a human race to mirror who He is … and when He does that, He creates a human community, including both men and women. The divine community created a human community of men and women to mirror who He is.

So, just as God exists in a divine community of three person, so we as humans are truly human when we live in community with other people.

So what? What is community? Living in community means choosing to live life together with other people. It means to invite other people into our lives and allow them access behind our curtains of isolation into the real us. It means both knowing other people and being known. It means thinking of our identity in a communal and social sense.

So how do we do this? We want to constantly be thinking about how we can make the things that we do more community-oriented. Community quiet times, community prayer, community confession, community bible study, community worship, community evangelism are just a start.

It does not mean that it's wrong to be alone. We need time alone when we can reflect, relax, and recharge, Jesus spent time alone (Mark 1.35). Making community is priority, like being missional, is really a change in mindset. Being in a community is a mindset that says "My life is inseparably connected to other people. I choose to walk through life with other people. I am not the most important person in the world. I want to live a life that serves other people. The things that I do affect other people. I want to value other people. I want to know and be known by other people. I belong to the family of God."

Being the community of Jesus means loving other deeply, sacrificially serving others, sharing what we have with others celebrating what we have in Christ together. It means abolishing and rejecting racism and sexism. It means disadvantaging ourselves for the benefit of others. We want to be the church, the community of Jesus. We want to invite other people into our lives, even the dark, broken places. We want to be authentic with others about who we are. We want to be the people of God. We want to mirror who our Creator is to a world that desperately needs Him. We want to do it together.