The Necessity of Christian Community
“Let us seize and hold tightly the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is reliable and trustworthy and faithful [to His word]; and let us consider [thoughtfully] how we may encourage one another to love and to do good deeds, not forsaking our meeting together [as believers for worship and instruction], as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more [faithfully] as you see the day [of Christ’s return] approaching.” (Hebrews 10:23-25, AMP)
“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:13, ESV)
My daughter makes friends wherever she goes. At 2 years old, it’s not a hard thing to do. We go to the park, the library, the play place, church, a party– wherever– and she looks around and chooses someone to play with. This past weekend, she found a little girl to play with solely because she loved the dress the little girl was wearing.
For her, that’s all it takes. She sees a kid who wants to have fun and that’s it. Instant friends, even if it’s just for that day.
As we grow, we lose that. Making friends gets harder. You learn you’re not meant to get along with everyone. And some of that is our own judgment; some of it is social anxiety or preconceived notions.
For many, this becomes concentrated in the church. Five short years ago, we all went into lockdown from the pandemic. Everything “unessential” came to a grinding halt. Some viewed the church as a non-negotiable part of life and others saw it as the one thing that must stand. But in the years following, the pandemic has proven to be detrimental to the connectedness of the church. Even to this day, there are still people who haven’t returned to Sunday gatherings.
Yet the Church should be the best tool a Christian has in finding a community and friendship. The truth is that we need each other. Community isn’t just a nice extracurricular thing that comes from our going to church. It’s an important piece in living a lifestyle of worship that is challenged, convicting, and changing.
The quintessential passage when it comes to this is 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul talks about the Church being a body of many parts with Jesus as the head. We all need each other and we all fulfill different functions within God’s Church. To undermine or devalue what someone else brings to the table is akin to cutting off a part of your body.
We need each other, but we need each other for much more than simple coordination or production value. We need each other as encouragement and accountability. My faith might exhort or inspire another person to press on in walking by righteousness. Someone else might keep me accountable in killing the sin I struggle with. In truth, our local churches do so much more than provide us a venue to meet in on Sunday mornings. Those churches provide the set the scene for glorifying God, celebrating Him, and coming together to remind each other of the purpose He has given to each of us.
We encourage each other to love others and to be the love of God extended to this world. We remind each other to be vigilant in serving the Lord. And we uphold each other in our struggles and our heartaches.
And that can be hard for plenty of people. It requires a vulnerability that most people shrink from. It demands that we share our anxieties, our pitfalls, our struggles, and yes, even our sin with each other. And I hate that I feel it must be said, but that’s not for gossip fodder. Lord forgive us if we betray the confidences of our Christian family in idle chatter.
Instead, it is for us to become a community of people that cover each other in prayer. It is for us to encourage each other in love and vulnerability. It motivates us to keep showing up and excites us to dive deeper into His Word and to continue working to build His Kingdom.
Hebrews 3 goes so far as to say that we need to do this every day. We need to exhort each other every day, as long as it is “today” in order to keep each other from becoming hardened by bitterness and sin.
You will notice that those who become hardened by their sin are those who don’t have a community to lean on that pushes them towards Christ daily. Remember: Iron sharpens iron, and in the same way, we sharpen each other (Proverbs 27:17). So those who live in a thriving Christian community, where members are checking in with each other, serving each other, and loving one another are more likely to stay firmly planted.
That goes farther than a congregational retention strategy. That’s the Christian walk itself. It is easier to look forward to corporate worship if we enjoy the people we worship with. Prayer becomes more precious when you gather together knowing that whatever is shared and prayed for in your midst is kept sacred and safe. Pursuing the Lord becomes all the more sweet when we have trusted friends to walk alongside us, knowing that our vulnerabilities are protected and we have someone to excite us onwards in our faith.
We need each other, friends. We need our shared gifts. We need each other’s encouragement. We need to be held responsible for the gift of grace that God has given us, calling out each other's sin in love and building each other up to go and tell the world of that grace we know.
As long as today is today, the Lord has given us each other to make that grace all the more sweet, because it is a shared understanding of each other. We all get to experience and know God through it and it’s not something we have to over explain.
Just the way my toddler can drop in at the park and can find common ground enough to play with the kids there, we should be able to stand on the common ground of Christ together; comforting each other on the hard days, encouraging each other through the struggles, and rejoicing with each other through the rest.
