The Nature of (a faith) Community

On my other blog, I've posted some thoughts on what it takes to make a community. As of late that has been a very serious question for me in the context of this time being spent outside the brick and mortar church. During our family worship time this morning, I was very honest with my family about my struggle. I'm fairly confident we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. That could be attributed to at least two possibilities. One, God may desire, command even, that we be part of a local church, i.e. the brick and mortar manifestation of the body of Christ. Two, our "failure" may be due to the fact that our fellowship consists only of our four immediate family members. My only desire is to do what is best for my family. At this point, I'm believing that rejoining a local body of believers in the traditional church is the correct course.

Two weeks ago I was very excited about the possibility of staying our current course. I was pumped up by the promise of other families joining us for the study of God's word and real life application of it as we lived that which we learned, as we became incarnational entities of God's love, resembling and having the effects of the early body of believers in the book of Acts. Two weeks later, it's still just us four. If I'm not going to do any better at inviting others in, I need to go somewhere that is.

Everyone likes to look back at the "good ol' days" of the Church when this kind of thing happened. People who are strongly opposed to the idea of the brick and mortar church use various passages from Acts and partial understandings of early Church history to justify their viewpoint. However, when you look at the passage hyperlinked above, it is hard to ignore this key phrase -"Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts."

Two weeks ago I was encouraged by what I perceived to be a revelation of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday mornings, our family is doing a very indepth study of the Gospel of John. I'm doing my best to keep it at level my sons can understand but then challenging enough for my wife and I. One of the themes that keeps coming up in this study is the removal of barriers between us and God - physical, spiritual, religious, social, economic, etc. Now, I could have been reading my own ideas into these, but I don't think that's the case. As these ideas kept popping up in our study, I said to myself, "God wants me to stay this course for the people for whom the brick and mortar church is a barrier." But I am missing the fellowship and the community of that type of church.

Tonight I came across a quote on another blog about the nature of reading the Bible (see point #2 there). I agree with that statement. I think it is dangerous to read the Word alone and draw your own conclusions without any outside conversation. I have said before that a committee of one is easy to convince.

So why am I arguing both sides of this issue, and more from the side that is completely opposite from what I'm currently doing? Because I am being bluntly honest. Because I want to be truly faithful. Where will I end up? I don't know for sure, but if I were a betting man, I'd say my family will begin church shopping real soon.

What's this got to do with the nature of community? Everything. We've got to find some people with a shared world view and a shared faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior to do life with. That's what community is all about.