A "Community" of Faith

Dear Friends:

Increasingly, I encounter more and more people who like to think of themselves as “solo” Christians. These are usually people who profess a belief in Christ but who have no affiliation with a religious community. They often believe they don’t need a community of faith in order to worship God. They each have their own personal beliefs, and they think that is enough to sustain their faith. “After all,” they say, “God can be worshiped anywhere and at anytime; who needs church?”

On the one hand, they are correct. God can be worshiped anywhere and at any time. There is no place where God is not and God is always responsive to our prayers whenever and wherever we offer them. But, they are quite wrong if they think they can maintain a close relationship with God and a vibrant faith on their on. The fact is we can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with church than we can be an individual and not be in a family or community. The two go hand in hand.

Every person needs a community of people for support, encouragement and guidance. Every Christian needs a community of faith for the same reasons. Faith cannot survive in a vacuum; it needs other people to nourish it in a nourishing community. After all, Christianity is at its heart a communal religion. It is based on communion and community – on loving and serving and sharing with our fellow human beings. And it is hard to love and serve and share if you are isolated from others.

When Jesus said you can’t love God and hate your neighbor, he didn’t necessarily use the term “hate” literally. What he meant was you can’t have a loving relationship with God in absence of a loving relationship with those around you. An old African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” A church community is just as important and essential to a Christian. Through the Christian community and corporate worship, we are fed – refueled – for the work we are called to do: to love and serve in Christ’s name, “with gladness and singleness of heart,” and as one community together. From that community – God’s community – we draw our faith, our love, our strength and our grace.

—I’ll see you in church,
Steve+