the road trip::tales of ambassadizing the nation

If you were at Grace College when I was, you probably fight off a cringe at that word. Community was THE buzz word of my time at Grace. (who knows, maybe it still is.) I think it's an unfortunate thing when a word that represents something so necessary is overused to the point of disgust.

Regardless of how you feel about the word, there's no question that community is biblical. That we were created for it. I love that Chester & Timmis discuss this issue from a God-centered perspective:

Our God is a triune God. He exists in community. We see it from the very beginning of His Word to us: 'Let us make man in our image.' (Genesis 1.26) And so, as we are created in the image of this God, it is a natural conclusion that we also are to exist in community.

We live in an individualistic society--we're all about doing it on our own, 'pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps'. I am part of a generation who has taken this mentality into the church: huge numbers of us have left the church altogether; many of us feel that we are better off reading, praying, listening to sermons on our own than being a part of 'irrelevant' church bodies; others of us see no issue with 'dating' the church-hopping from one to the next for various reasons, not ever really being established in any community.

The church isn't perfect. But she is Christ's bride. Can't love Jesus and hate His bride, as so many have said before. We are called to commune with each other.

Absolutely this means finding a church body and being committed. But that's so much more than Sundays. It's knowing people. Letting them know you. Finding 'family'. That's community. I have seen different churches do this in different ways. One is small groups: Mark Artrip does a great job of explaining what community can and should look like in small groups. Some do it through Sunday school; some have small enough congregations that it happens in the body as a whole.