“Community: Valuing Each Other” (Part One)

Often the five main values of the church can be listed this way:

• Grace – what God does for us that we could never do for ourselves, and His love.
• Worship – our response to God, including the services of worship in the church but also teaching private obedience in worship.
• Community – this week’s subject, and the fellowship or unity but also friendship that ties us together in a common cause and to care for each other.
• Mission – this includes missions, but also the direction of the church and the identity and focus.
• Integrity – how all of this is to be done, and the issue of dealing with real life.

Let’s focus on community this week, one value that’s often taken for granted.  Meaning, leaders of the church often just hope and believe and relax because they have taught on love and they know the people “know what they’re supposed to do.” I operated that way for a while and realized there were people in need who weren’t being helped, hospital patients who weren’t being visited except by me; and so, community and care began to be organized and managed behind the scenes.

Most of us don’t go around saying we need community.  But we know we need friends, we need to feel close to some people, we need to know that others love us, and we need to live in relationship.  And some of that means we’re going to meet together!

While it’s true that many of us have picked our friends and our friends have picked us, there are people that arrive at the church with few friends in the world and certainly with few or no friends in the faith.  One of our goals is to help them establish true community and fellowship in the church while not losing the connections they have outside the church.  (Way too often that happens and they no longer know unchurched people or unsaved people to invite to the church or to discuss serious matters with!)

So let’s take these three blogs and three days to look at the theology of community or fellowship or love, and then also list some practical steps toward establishing it if you’re in the management or leadership of a church.

It’s not hard, but it takes work.  It’s not quick, but it’s very satisfying and worthwhile.

Community Equals Righteous Love and Authentic Connections for People in the Church!

Let’s talk about the reasons that we’ve got to have true love and community available in the church, including medium-sized groups and small groups:

1. God the Trinity models relationships beyond our understanding, but God commands fellowship – agape that is possible for those who will.

This has always been His call for His people.  So what we’re doing in these areas, some of which is hard work, must always be seen as basic obedience to God, and is based upon the kind of person He is.

2. The pastor must teach “community” or fellowship love as surely as we teach evangelism or missions.  Not everyone agrees with that, and some might think that because we preach on the text, “love one another,” that we are doing enough.  But I am thinking that the teaching must also include definitions of that love and practical illustrations of how it works one to another.

And, as we will see, we must teach ways and manage ways in the church where that love can be shown.  Many of our parents grew up in homes where no one ever said, “I love you.”  That is a struggle for those who experienced that, to show love themselves when they become parents themselves.  Many men do not know how to say or show love to other men.  The church must work on this and provide the way.

3. The pastor who teaches this should model the love and mood of caring for others.

That comes true when we speak of relationships or small groups that we are in or the Adult Bible Fellowship that we or at least our wife attends.  We model love with a spirit that is not critical of other churches, not always picking apart the president, and not acting like certain sins are the really bad ones (did you ever notice that they are usually the sins that we do not do too much?).

We also get a chance to model love and community in the hallways every Sunday, and at other gatherings.  Walking around and meeting people is not “glad handing” and campaigning.  It is modeling care for others and love.

After 43 years of pastoring I still get nervous when I walk up to meet a new guest.  But I knew it is what I do.  I did it with a smile.  And a little bit of nerve.  And the sense of God’s Spirit being with me.

4.     The staff and main board of the church might best also emphasize and model true love and community in the church.  I don’t mean that every trustee or deacon or elder board has to be mandated to be in a group of the church, or to greet in the halls.  But it wouldn’t hurt!

And it also is imperative that the staff and the boards of the churches lead the church to benevolence, doing good for others, not just overseas but in the immediate community.  That too models love.

5.     We must acknowledge that many of us do not pay close attention to the love mood of the church, so that what happens there is by default rather than by planning and prayer.

One pastor told me that he felt having greeters at the doors is artificial, and that it should be spontaneous and without administration help!  Okay.  That’s what we wish.  But we also wish everybody would stop sinning, and we still try to give more specific help than that.

We still wish everybody would learn to worship on their own, but we help in group worship and also with other teaching about the issue.

6.     Workers and volunteers can have a call to gratitude and unity in their job descriptions, and we can also provide a way for them to meet in community with other teachers in their section.

Many Sunday school or children’s church workers would like to have one out of six weeks off so they can go to their own Adult Bible Fellowship or smaller group that meets on Sundays.  It seems good to train the leaders of each section – preschool or primary or junior – to know how to lead their group in an ABF-type experience.  That means developing support for each other and praying for each other and getting to know each other.

Everyone has that need, whether we admit it or not.  And why not have that fulfilled with the people you work with?

7.     The leadership team can be sure that there are provisions for community in the church – not just assuming that because love is taught it is practiced!

The Adult Bible Fellowship system is great for Sunday school remade for community and care.  Small groups within the ABFs and other small groups and Home ABFs or small groups in homes are managed and publicized by church leadership.

Small groups for discipleship must be managed but also monitored for mood and reception of newcomers, if they are open groups inviting guests and new people.  In any world, there should be some kind of accountability or “report card” at least once a year so you know how the ABF is doing and how the groups are doing.

I remember when we once had a Sunday school teacher that no one had heard, and she was helping children get into some heresies that none of us would want in our churches.  Someone has to see the lesson plans and sit in at least once in a while.

8.     Some cautions about providing true community in any church, from someone who’s really not a pessimist:

• It is not enough just to have groups in existence.  They can deteriorate or so lack training that it shows in ways they do not welcome new people or even handle the Bible.
• Sometimes directors or pastors do not know how to train people for true community and how to help them relax.  There are some who feel they do not need to care if it exists.  Maybe that sounds like Murphy’s Law.
• The wrong or selfish class leader in an ABF or group can abort the whole plan.  He can make it his group.  Again, the team leadership and the careful connection with one of the pastors helps to monitor this.
• Up-front people on Sundays in the worship service as well as in the various classes or ABFs set a pattern or mood that influences the personality and manner of the church and groups.  It’s scary, but in many ways the church does adopt the personality of the pastor.
• Certain people are not easily accepted at many churches.  They will never get community unless someone cares about it and does something special to help. Did Jesus love individuals that some did not like or that can be called “losers”?  If He did not, we are all in trouble.
• Regular staff time or department meetings should analyze how the church is doing in this area, with attention to specific groups.  Dr. Henry Brandt used to write, “People do not do what you expect, but they do what you inspect.”

We’re talking about the kind of ministry-work of community building work where there is accountability and careful planning.

One Response to ““Community: Valuing Each Other” (Part One)”

1. lakehills101 says:

   March 22, 2010 at 10:17 pm

   Hey Knute,

   Good article. It resonates with me right now, as I’m doing a series on relationships in our church right now. I know it’s a controversial book, but I’ve been reading “the Shack”, and yeah, I know I’m a latecomer!, When I read your first point (“God the Trinity models relationships”) I couldn’t help thinking about the marvelous way this is illustrated in that book. Honestly, I had never thought much about relationship among the trinity. (Once again, a little slow!)

   Also liked the part about “the love mood” being by default rather than by design. Good stuff, and helpful.

   Thanks
   ~ Mike Knapp