Created for Community
In the west, we are driven to radical individualism more and more. We are told that a reliance on one another is a weakness, so we pursue community only through play dates and occasional poker nights as long as they don’t overlap with our family life and what we would like to accomplish. We have become more focused on things rather than people. Our homes are becoming bigger, but our communities are becoming smaller. This should be different in the church, of course, but it mostly isn’t. Allowing your extended family into your home whenever they want is normal, but allowing your church family into your home whenever they want is relatively uncommon. Lust, greed, gluttony, and intense loneliness are on the rise, each of them growing in the dark.
Generally, we try to solve this through counseling or therapy. We use a specialist to help us deal with the cages we have built ourselves. Most of what a good therapist will do is simply sit, listen, and ask questions. We spend money and time going to someone who does what a good friend should do.
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Matt. 12:46-50 ESV
What would happen if we treated our church family as a higher priority than our extended family? What if we didn’t allow ourselves to hide portions of our life from others? What if we set that example and then saw what exploded out of it just as we see in Acts?
"Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matt. 22:37-40 NIV
Someone once told me that there is not a single command in the New Testament that can be done out of the context of community. I haven’t gone one by one through each command to determine if this is true, but it rings true with all the ones I can think of off the top of my head. As I look at the Gospel movements that are happening throughout the world, one of the constants within all of them is the heavy reliance on the family of God. The people in these movements do this because they have to. Most current Gospel movements are in third-world countries, where their lives are very intertwined out of necessity. It is a part of what creates an organic movement of the Gospel because if one person changes, everybody in their village knows about it. Once they take root, these churches represent the Kingdom of God to the broader community with the very visible way they love one another.
So how do we remedy this situation in the West with Gospel-centered movements in mind? It requires living in a self-sacrificial way. There are some small steps we can take to get started:
Listen to people, ask questions, and don’t spend the whole time thinking about the next thing you have to do. (Gal. 6:2)
Open your home to your church family – without scheduling start and end times – just as if they are true family. (1 Peter 4:8-10)
Be transparent, share weaknesses, and confess sin with brothers/sisters (not only your spouse). (James 5:16)
When pursuing this style of living in Spain, we have seen many people from many different nations come to faith. We have found that the way we love one another is a persistent reason they begin to trust Jesus. We have seen major sin patterns end as a result of the consistent accountability that has come from the openness of our own lives and willingness to listen to others. We have seen the Kingdom of God spread more from self-sacrificial and consistent love in real community than anything else. When we live our lives self-focused and closed-off, we see much less.
The example we set from our own lives makes a major difference in what is multiplied. If we pursue living out the family of God with the goal of representing the Kingdom to the rest of the world, organic growth of the Kingdom will follow.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35 ESV