I sat with a psychiatrist friend this week who critiqued the western church from the standpoint of an African. He said we compartmentalize our lives to the point where church fits into one part of life, but does not affect the rest of it. For African Christians in general, church is at the heart of life. This is really just another way of saying they understand community better than we do.
One of the biggest things we get wrong about church is community. We have beautiful buildings, sleek technology, programs coming out of our ears, and yet people are not connecting with each other.
Jesus did not define church in terms of buildings, technology or programs. He defined church as a group of friends, with himself at the heart. Christians are friends of Jesus and hence friends of one another.
The church I was part of planting almost forty years ago and which we have been visiting recently had a tremendous sense of community. Sure, people had jobs and some were married and beginning families, but a common commitment to what we were doing together permeated everything. We made sacrifices for the greater cause of the kingdom, we loved being with each other, and knew there was a higher goal we were all serving than our own individual fulfilment.
The first church was built on those kind of foundations. The Bible says of those believers simply that they were “together.” They had their own lives, but the life they shared in Christ was the foundation.
Individualism is the curse of the western church. It destroys our ability to sacrifice and to work together for the common cause of the kingdom. It promotes self-fulfilment. It reduces the blessings of divine provision to the narrow self-interest of name it and claim it.
A consumer spirit permeates the church in our culture simply because too many of us are in it for what we can get out of it, not for what we can give into it.
The kingdom overturns the way things operate. In the kingdom, the more we give, the more we receive. In the kingdom, the more we give ourselves to community, the more fulfilled we are as individuals.
If we are asking the question why the church outside of the west is growing so much faster, part of the answer is undoubtedly in its deeper understanding of the community the New Testament calls koinonia. The word refers to having things in common, actually having a life in common.
Paul said the life we live is no longer our own, but Christ living in us. If that is the case, and if Christ is also living in other believers, then we can have more community with people from the other side of the world than with our unbelieving neighbor who looks and speaks just like us.
The recovery of a sense of the community is essential if we are to have nets that hold the catch God wants to give us. We live in a world of broken families, and we have the very best family to bring people into.
The health of our churches can be judged by how well we do friendship, first with Jesus and then with each other.
Let’s build communities that can heal a broken world. Any sacrifice we make to that end is worth it.
CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH DAVID & ELAINE CAMPBELL IN HELPING TO SUSTAIN THEIR ACTIVE MINISTRY.
AWAKENING MINISTRIES // FOUNDATION of FAITH Project
Foundation of Faith Project is strengthening generations in faith and bringing beautiful changes to the communities around them. Through teaching, mentoring and coaching, many are finding out who they are and who they are destined to be. They are bringing more to their world. David Campbell is the key leader in this initiative and you can support him financially directly through Awakening Ministries.
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