God says it is not good for a person to be alone. We were made for community. In his final prayer, Jesus prays that we would be one just as he is one with the Father. The book of Acts gives us a radical picture of Christians sharing life, spending time together, supporting each other. But how do we actually live it out today? What does it look like in our lives? In this lab, a group of ordinary people from Ecclesia will discuss what community looks like in their lives and will explore the practical ways we can pursue deeper and more genuine community.
If you want to think more about the topic of community, here are some resources we recommend.
Books
• Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Four Loves by C. S. Lewis
• The Connecting Church by Randy Frazee
• The Search to Belong by Joseph Meyers
Sermons
• “The Community of Jesus” by Tim Keller
• “Spiritual Friendship” by Tim Keller
If you have been in this lab, you probably have lots of thoughts to share, more than we had time for on Sunday. Let’s continue the conversation. Leave your comments below.
October 10th, 2007 at 12:44 PM What do you think the biggest challenge for community in the American Church will be over the next 25 years? And how should we respond?
October 14th, 2007 at 11:24 PM I think we can always trying to make community, but it's more like a heart thing if i really wanna have community with someone rather than just a superficial to do thing. real community takes lot's of time and going in and out of problems of life together with someone. Community needs a higher ranking in our priority list !! Isn't it the same as in our christian life, the more time i spent with god the more i understand his way and he can work in my life, or when i don't spent time focusing on God, my life will get empty and loneley.
October 15th, 2007 at 02:24 PM "A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness. The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means "common, public, shared by all or many"[1]. Communis comes from a combination of the Latin prefix con- (which means "together") and the word munis (which has to do with performing services." As before described community means being together with people also has to do with performing services. The challenging part for the church in the future is that we want only to have community to satisfy our own needs. -Like Simon commented community starts developing when we really get to know people and be part of their lives. Not only in the good times but the hard times too. Many times we are too “busy” to care about the needs of other people but yet we want to make sure other people care about us. This is a two ways relationship. Means to “give up” our priorities and give some room for other people be part our lives.