Thriving in Community
Not too long ago, someone asked me if I had ever been to England. I had to pause and think about it for a moment. Technically, I have been to England, meaning I have stood on English soil. If you were to track me with a GPS, there would be a record of my physical presence on the island nation, but have I been to England? I ended up answering the question this way: “Well, I’ve been in the Heathrow Airport on a layover, but I’ve never seen or experienced England for real.”
I think there are a lot of Christians who have been in church but have not really experienced church the way God intended. We may have gone to church, sat through the services, and even attended regularly on a once-a-week schedule, only to be left wanting and asking the question, “Is this all there is to this church thing?”
To truly begin to flourish in the courts of our God, we are going to have to leave the terminal of spectatorship and pass beyond the secured barriers of an isolated life. We’re going to have to leave the airport, so to speak, and travel up and down the streets of the city, interacting with people in their native environments and unpacking our bags. As long as we view church as a place where we spend time occasionally on our way someplace else, we will miss out on one of the very things we need to thrive in the Kingdom of God—and that’s community.
What Is Community?
Webster’s Dictionary defines community as “a unified body of individuals . . . people with common interests living in a particular area.” The word itself is a combination of “com,” which means “together,” and “une” which is “one or singular.” So etymologically speaking, the word community means “together as one.”
Furthermore, this definition is supported by Scripture and gives a clearer description of how the Body of Christ organically functions. We can also see how it describes the need for connectivity that every Christian has as part of their spiritual heritage and makeup. We were created by community (a triune God) for community. The very story of God’s creating mankind in the garden is also the first reference to community: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Gen 1:26). The Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has dwelt as an eternal community within Themselves. It was out of Their “together as one,” or as theologians have described it, “Trinity or tri-unity,” that God created humankind and intrinsically coded community into our very nature. In part, this is what it means to be made in the image of God.
Out of everything God did create and described as “good” or “perfect,” the only thing that was not good was the fact that man was alone. Woman was God’s answer to Adam’s lack of community. Instead of making her separately, God fashioned her from Adam’s side; thus, they were “one flesh.”
In the Church, God has performed another creative miracle by taking people from different backgrounds, causing each of us to drink of the same Spirit, and baptizing or immersing us all into one Body—Christ’s. This unifying act is more than an ethereal picture of our ideological unity; it is a spiritual reality that has material and practical implications. We were made for unity because, alone, we are not complete.
What we need to flourish and fulfill our assigned destiny is not only found in a vertical relationship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We also need the horizontal community of one another to strengthen and add to what is incomplete in ourselves and our faith. This is biblical Christianity. Until we have allowed ourselves to truly be planted into the fertile soil of human community, we have not truly experienced life in the Kingdom of God. We may be in close proximity to it, we may have been to church, but we have not truly experienced what it means to be the Church.
–excerpt from In His House
