Summer 2009 Pastor's Corner

a "Community" of Believers...

We must be a group of people that gets “small” enough that no matter how large we are on a Sunday morning, there are small places where everybody can be known. “Ah, a small group,” you say. “Not exactly,” I respond, “unless you mean 25 people of all ages and stages of life—kids, too—who worship together, do life together, counsel together, witness together…and so display the love and grace of Christ. A group that meets for Bible study, and for cookouts where non-believing neighbors are invited and feel welcome. A group that shares its money and its time and the childcare with each other. That confronts were it sees sin, shares needs and gives comfort in response.” I’ve never been a part of a small group like that—not saying that you haven’t ever been—just that I haven’t. And most of us probably haven’t.

Over the last several months I have become increasingly aware of the need for the local body of Christ to live the gospel together, as a community. I’m not talking about some large-scale concept of multi-church cooperation. Nor am I referring to a unity that is based on doctrine and expressed in a theological statement. What I have in mind is a group of people—or perhaps a group of groups of people—who are simultaneously committed to the Biblical gospel of grace, and to living sacrificially and intentionally in redemptive relationship with others.

We must be a group of people that gets “small” enough that no matter how large we are on a Sunday morning, there are small places where everybody can be known.

Several books have proven influential in this area for me. It started in Acts, as we preached through that book and saw how the early church lived—committed to the Apostles’ teaching, and to one another—a lifestyle that grew them and proved effective in witnessing of the grace of Christ to the watching world. We moved to Deuteronomy in part to look at how God and his word intend to form this sort of a holy community.

Beyond the Bible, Total Church (by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis; Crossway, 2008) has helped me as well. In this book—which I highly recommend—the authors develop the two ideas of gospel and community as they relate to most other conceivable areas of church life. While not a perfect book, of course, it presents a challenge to people like me—and churches like ours—that have some need to grow in our understanding of community and its place in God’s plan.

These books (and there have been others), together with the many conversations I have had about them in elder board meetings, church staff meetings, at the recent men’s retreat, etc.—have made me think about redemptive community in a different way. Or perhaps I should say that they have been used of God to prod my thinking on what redemptive community should look like. I don’t have the answers yet—the “different way” is not clear to me at the moment. But that’s the direction I’m thinking and the elders are planning. I invite you to pray with us and think with us about what a local gospel-centered community looks like and ways in which we can grow in that.

In Christ,

Steve Clark, Senior Pastor