The Why of Community
By Pastor Adria Willett-Leonardo
Why do we build relationships with other Christians? Why do we gather as a community and work towards unity? It’s such hard and messy work! So often the church has gotten it wrong, doing more damage than good. So why bother?!
Trying to explain the importance of community is like trying to explain the importance of oxygen to the body. God designed humans to be like him, living in relationship with others. Forming a people after his own heart has always been central to God’s purposes in history. We join the body of Christ in our baptism and participating in community is key to our formation as disciples of Jesus. A united body of Christ is both God’s goal and method.
Let me explain these statements a little. In Genesis 2 we learn that the Lord God created the heavens and earth, animals and plants, he formed Adam. He placed him in the garden, in inter-dependent relationships with the non-human creation. But the Lord observed that among the creatures, Adam had no counterpart. “It was not good for the man to be alone,” said the Lord God, so the Lord created the woman.
Right from the beginning, we were designed for relationship. (In fact, research has shown that humans who isolate themselves from others severely threaten their physical and mental health.) We need others to be fully ourselves.
God demonstrated this himself: he is himself the Trinity, three persons in one. As the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another and live in community, so those who are made in God’s image find love and identity in community. And soon after the Creator formed humanity, he sought relationships with them.
God called Abraham and his descendants to be a light to the nations, so that his salvation would reach to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). At Sinai, God made a formal agreement with the people of Israel: they would be his people and he would be their God. God commanded them to live according to his laws and so display his character to the nations. The way they treated one another, the way the cared for the vulnerable, the very way they worshipped and followed God was meant to bring praise to God as the only true God, Creator of the Universe.
We know that the people of Israel could not follow God faithfully, nor truly obey the covenant laws. So the next part of God’s plan unfolded: God came to earth himself, in the person of Jesus, as a fulfillment of who Israel was meant to be. The good news came first to the Jews, God’s chosen people. But the good news was meant for all nations, just as God intended from the beginning. So God included the Gentiles in his family, creating a new humanity, a new people of God.
In Jesus, the divided world is reconciled to each other; in Christ, what is torn apart can be healed (Ephesians 2:14-16; Colossians 1:20). In Christ, people of all different ethnicities, races, tribes, languages, walks of life—people who wouldn’t normally come together—become one body (Galatians 3:28). We become one people working, living, and worshipping together because of and for Jesus. This is an essential part of God’s plan: to bring everything together under Christ (Ephesians 1:10).
As theologians Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon wrote, “In Jesus we meet not a presentation of basic ideas about God, world, and humanity, but an invitation to join up, to become part of a movement, a people.” In our faithfulness to live according to the ways of God, we are witnesses to the world of the new reality that is now established in and through Jesus Christ. We are now part of the colony of Christ, an island of one culture in the middle of another. As the body of Christ, we embody an alternative community and a new way of being.
One of the hardest aspects of Christian community is that we don’t choose who else is there with us. Yet this is precisely it’s transforming power! When we build relationship with others outside of our families and outside our usual tribes—people who are different than us and with whom we might disagree—we open ourselves to a wider worldview. We hear stories that we might not have heard otherwise. We encounter others who experience the world differently than we do. And this has the capacity to change us. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” as it says in Proverbs 27:17.
In addition to all of this, other Christians model the life of faith to us, remind us of God’s faithfulness, embody God’s care for us, help us discern the movement of the Spirit, and keep us accountable. In community we learn how to love God, ourselves, and others. When we participate in community, knowing and being known, we open the door to be formed more like Christ.
We need one another to be who we were meant to be.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, as much as participating in Christian community can be time-consuming, frustrating, disappointing, and even at times, painful, it is an essential part of God’s plan. And the truth is that you need the church, and the church needs you.
As we begin the fall season, consider how you can take one step further into building community with others at BCC.