Spiritual Community is Essential

 

“Community is much more than belonging to something. 
It’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter.”

 

Post-Covid, it’s been widely reported that the social isolation during the pandemic has led to increased mental health problems like insomnia, anger, fear, anxiety, stress, depression and even suicidal thoughts and attempts worldwide. All of this isn’t surprising. God designed us to be social creatures. The isolation of the pandemic disturbed the worldwide state of mind. Our world experienced firsthand the dark side of being devoid of human interaction and touch at a new and disastrous level. It affected sleep cycles and sleep is one of the body's natural healers. With good sleep, a person loses attention towards unpleasant events, thereby being renewed with energy and zeal. When it’s hampered, it leads to suicidal tendencies.   

  The bottom line is that God has designed us for community.  This morning we’re completing our study of the “one another” statements in the New Testament. We only worked through a few of them, yet there are 59 of these “one another” commands in the New Testament. It’s just under 60 exhortations to actually do something for another brother or sister in Christ. These are behaviors we do out of an overflow of our relationship with Jesus, but they’re not things that we do solely unto the Lord Jesus. Other believers must be involved in order to fulfill them. They’re lived out in our ongoing relationship with other Christians. The primary place that we interact with other believers is in the local church family. While you can intellectually learn these commands by watching a worship service remotely or by listening or reading the material, they can’t be obeyed and applied without physical contact and interaction. In other words, it’s just not the same if YOU aren’t with us at church.
  Going to church is not about getting your attendance gold star. It’s not about gaining God’s favor because you got together with His people. Church is not a place to go, it’s a family, a living body that God wants you to be a part of for your good and His glory. Faithfully attending worship services helps combat two of the greatest enemies that we have to Christlikeness in American culture: busyness & individualism.
  In American culture, we’re so busy and there are so many options. Anyone who chooses to attend church for worship has potentially said “no” to another half a dozen options. The problem is that the vast majority of them aren’t bad things. They’re just not usually the best things. For example, many work six days a week. Sunday is often the only day to catch up on rest and rest is a good thing. Yet, the better thing is that, if at all possible, we need spiritual rest for our souls that we find as we worship.
  Then, we’re bombarded with the message of “I’ve got to take care of ME.” If we break out of “me,” it often only devolves into the small circle of the “we” of my family. Is “me time” a good thing? Yes. Is “we time” of family a good thing? Yes. Yet, the better is the “we” of our church family. With the almost cultlike emphasis of “me” time, one would think that we are going to be in heaven alone – just me and Jesus – but we’re not.
  God designed us for community. While each person is born again individually, one can’t be a solo healthy Christian. God designed us for each other. The local church is the best place for spiritual growth. While you can be self-taught when it comes to education, or work alone and be successful. You can even exercise alone to increase your physical health. Yet, the Bible is clear, you can’t increase your spiritual health and maturity alone. Why should we make worshipping together a priority?
  You are needed. Although it is counter-intuitive, helping others is the most effective way to help yourself. We’ve been programmed today to be consumers. Buy more, earn more, spend more. It’s self-focused has us constantly thinking about ourselves, what we need and want. God built you to be in service to others. There are needs in the body of Christ (the church family) that only you can fill. There are people who need your voice, your face, and your life experience. The more you try to fill your life with your wants, the emptier it becomes. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,” (Matthew 6:33).
  It’s a place to give and receive grace. Most of the time when someone says why they quit going to church, it’s because of something hurtful someone said or did. We have all been there. The Bible says that when this happens, we are to confront the offender, “speaking the truth in love,” (Ephesians 4:15). The local church must be a place of kindness and gentleness. Rude or unthoughtful brothers and sisters need grace and instruction as much as anyone. We can model and teach kindness in how we talk to them about their words and actions. Without your loving intervention, those same people might push others away from Christ.
  It’s noteworthy too that someone will quit attending a church if they feel they’re mistreated, yet most of us are mistreated periodically at our jobs but we rarely walk off in a huff without trying first to resolve matters. It says a lot about what we value more, money or spiritual family.
  It is vital for your spiritual health. The Body of Christ is not just Jesus dying on the cross. The New Testament often speaks of being “in the body” of Christ. The Body of Christ is the local assembly of those who gather to honor and worship Him. That’s simply not possible if you’re not physically gathering with other believers. Skipping physical worship hurts us. Much as a biological family needs physical interaction, we need personal interaction with our brothers and sisters in Christ. While God does not judge us based on our attendance, Hebrews 10:24 does urge us, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
  It’s no coincidence that the world has gone mad while church attendance has dropped to record lows. Ultimately, there’s nothing more important that you can do for yourself, your family, our community, and even our country than gathering with spiritual brothers and sisters to weekly worship King Jesus. He designed us to need Him and each other!

Can we help you spiritually? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

Hello is Healthier

 

“A smile is the universal welcome.”  Max Eastman

 
Okay, think about it. Where’s a place that you find that you’re consistently warmly welcomed? And not just a, “I’m doing my job welcome.” About the only business where I find that I am warmly welcomed is at a car dealership. I’m rarely there more than a minute before someone is asking, “Sir, have you been helped?” Of course, a car buyer/customer is potentially worth thousands of dollars in commission, so there are other motivations which is why we have a high index of suspicion at a car dealership.
  Did you know that habitually saying “Hello” to others can make you healthier? It also opens doors for friendships. I know that it did for us.
  Some of our lifelong friends in Burlington are Tim and Rozanne Bird. We’d moved in for just a few days and the only people that we knew in Burlington were those from our church. Shortly after we moved in while I was away at work, Tim came over with a fresh loaf of zucchini bread for our family that Rozanne had made…and we’ve been friends ever since. Their children played and grew up with our children. We’d spend the holidays together. We were there for each other if there was a need or an emergency. There was hardly anything more enjoyable for us than to stop and talk to Tim and Rozanne. And though we moved from that neighborhood years ago, we’re still friends and periodically get together (though not as often as either of us would like).
  Being friendly can help you live longer. Gallup just released a poll that learned that adults in the U.S. who regularly say hello to multiple people in their neighborhood have higher wellbeing than those who greet fewer or no neighbors. Your wellbeing score increases steadily by the number of neighbors greeted, from 51.5 among those saying hello to zero neighbors to 64.1 for those greeting six neighbors.
  Americans report saying hello on a regular basis to five neighbors, on average, with 27% reporting greeting six or more. This varies substantially by age, however. Young adults (those under 30) say hello to an average of 2.9 neighbors, compared with 6.5 among those aged 65 or older. About one in seven among those under 30 (14%) greet six or more neighbors, compared with 41% of those aged 65 and older. Having children under 18 in the household marginally improves the chances of greeting neighbors.
  We are suffering from an epidemic of loneliness in the United States and Western civilization. Lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to an advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General released earlier this year. The physical consequences of poor connection can be devastating, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults. The continued rise in suicide rates is connected to this crisis that as a culture we are so disconnected.
  What we so cherish, our radical individualism, is at the same time destroying us. Individualism has engendered unprecedented social isolation and yielded a depth of loneliness unique to 21^st-century American culture.
  God designed us as relational beings. It’s a reality long affirmed by the Bible but now also supported by neuroscience. We must understand that we are social beings before we can regain social connectedness, friendship, and community in our church and in the world. While we can’t change the world, we can make a difference in our world. What can we do?
  Limit your smart phone use. Personal, local conversations have been replaced by furious tapping on glowing screens separated by hundreds of miles. A smart phone is nearly always within reach. It’s there to wake us up in the morning, play our favorite music, capture our lives in pics and video, an ever-present portal to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, but it carries a price. Our digital interactions with one another, which are often necessarily brief and superficial, begin to pattern all our relationships. As we become shallow in our interactions with people, it becomes our habit.
  The barista at the coffee counter gets a DM-like response. When we hang out with friends, we offer a series of Tweet-like responses in a superficial conversation with little spiritual meaning. The way we interact online becomes the norm for how we interact offline and it’s not the way to have a good conversation with someone. A good conversation involves listening and timing. That’s lost with Internet communications because you’re not there with that person. We must not treat another person the way we would if we interact with social media, but we will if we’re not careful.
  The Lord Jesus models perfect being-in-relationship for us. Jesus was never not in relationship. He didn’t enter this world by splitting the heavens but by gently growing in his mother’s womb. He entered a normal family, spent His childhood and early adulthood in obscurity, and then launched His ministry by inviting others to follow Him. Even on the night of his crucifixion, Jesus gathered for a meal with His disciples, then He led them to pray with Him at Gethsemane. With His final breaths, Jesus instructed his disciples to care for his mother. If relationships were essential to Jesus, shouldn’t they be essential for us, too?
  Like Jesus, we exist for relationships. If Jesus was history’s most “fully alive” human, it shouldn’t surprise us that a person can’t become fully human without a community. Simply put, we were created for community.
  Ours is a social gospel. American Christians tend to read Scripture from an exclusively individualistic framework. We’re surprised to find that the Lord’s Prayer contains only plural pronouns (“Our Father…Give us… Forgive us”) and that the Apostle Paul writes “our Lord” 53 times but “my Lord” just once. So, our salvation isn’t less than personal; it’s more than personal. Responding to the loneliness epidemic creates an ideal opportunity for churches to prioritize fostering authentic community.
  Western individualism has sparked unprecedented social isolation. We must work to recover the biblical need of community. It can begin next door by simply saying “hello” to a neighbor. It starts at work as you take time to interact with co-workers. It’s cultivated at church, as we share and care with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Can we help you spiritually? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

We are family!

“Satan always hates Christian fellowship; it is his policy to keep Christians apart. Anything which can divide saints from one another he delights in. He attaches far more importance to godly intercourse than we do. Since union is strength, he does his best to promote separation.”  C.H. Spurgeon

  If you’ve been a Christian for very long, you know that one of the most common questions when seeking to ascertain someone’s relationship with Jesus Christ is: “Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?” What’s so noteworthy about that question is that if you search the pages of Scripture, you’ll never find that expression “personal.” Our radical overemphasis on a “personal” relationship with God is a very American yet not a biblical or theological construct. Instead, what we find in the Bible is a God Who is at least as concerned with His group (me/you in relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ) as He is with the individual (me in relationship with God). Yet, American churchianity has been shaped by a worldview diametrically opposed to the teaching of Scripture and the outlook of those early Christians. American Christians have been taught to believe that my individual fulfillment and my personal relationship with God is far more important than any connection I might have with brothers and sisters in Christ. We become oblivious to biblical truths like “Jesus died for His Church” (Ephesians 5:25) and also forget that ultimately all Christians will spend eternity in heaven together.

  In our naïveté American believers, have in very subtle ways, been conformed to this world. Yet, there’s great hope for Spirit led transformation. God’s vision for community, for spiritual family, as reflected in the lives of those early Christians, offers a powerful antidote to the relational ills that so often characterize the lives of contemporary evangelicals. It’s essential that we grow and mature in a biblical understanding that a local church, our local church, is a family.

  It’s encouraging to see this beginning to take place within our church in places like our 50+ group, women’s ministry and their recent “Garden Getaway,” our quilting class. Even our recent men’s fishing outing helped us gain new ground in our understanding that our church is a family. Our Sunday Morning Live classes and other small groups continually help us gain ground in this area. Even teams who serve in a ministry together like our worship team or midweek ministries increase our understanding of church as a family. God has so much more joy and fulfillment for us when we understand that our church is a family.

  Yet, for most of us, this is so foreign that we’re going to have to immerse ourselves in the study of church as a family to begin to grasp it. Even when we’re part of the church as a family, we may not even be aware of it. We’re rarely purposeful when we’re part of the church as a family. In other words, we’re part of it, yet often don’t even realize that we’re part of it.

  With this in mind, please join us in our summer reading of Randy Frazee’s, The Connecting Church. A New Testament understanding of the church as a family is so foreign to us that it’s going to take both prayer and a study of God’s Word to begin to reprogram our misconceptions of New Testament Christianity. Add to that, the book is a mere $12, not much more than a McDonald’s lunch. The book is written in a conversational style, and though thought provoking, it’s not some dry theological tome. It will challenge you and stretch you so that you have a greater understanding of what the Bible teaches about what it means to be part of a spiritual family.

  Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer. It’s easier to create opportunities for fellowship when the weather is warmer. Fellowship is a planned investment. While it’s going to mean a shift in our thinking, schedule and priorities, you’ll find that the investment is well worth it. Much of it can be done in the midst of the normal stuff of life.

  For example, if a lady is headed to Milwaukee or Chicago to shop, ask another lady or several other ladies from church to go along. Include a stop at a coffee shop or perhaps a place for lunch in the trip. Maybe you’re dropping someone off at the airport, why ride alone?

  Determine to stretch out of your normal and safe social circles. Ask someone to go along who you don’t normally spend time with. Maybe someone you hardly know. Perhaps even someone that grates on you a bit. Stretch out of your world. For example, if you’re older, ask someone younger. If you have kids, ask someone who’s single to come along. If you have older children, ask someone with small children. Spiritual family and growth is not about playing it safe or being stuck in the familiar.  

  Here are some other areas that you might consider. If you’re a walker, runner, biker, golfer, motorcyclist, ask someone else to join you. Do you have love bonfires, going to the beach, having a picnic? Then, ask another family or two to come along. If you’re headed to a Brewers game (even a Cubs game), invite someone else. Even if you’re headed to watch your child play ball, ask someone to tag along. Your child will appreciate the extra cheering section. Stop at a local ice cream place afterwards.

  Do you love to go to garage sales? Find a friend to join you. It could be an extra bonus if they happen to own a truck or large van J. Have a theme party or invite others to join you at a unique restaurant. Maybe find someone who needs an extra hand, perhaps an elderly person or someone who’s been in the hospital recently, with some yard work. Invite another family to join you. Then, share a meal together afterwards. Even just go see an older person and spend some time with them.

  Ask someone to help you with a project. Jane and I have some lifelong friends in Detroit, Russ and Linda Johns. Our friendship was born one Saturday when they asked me to help them wash some walls.

  Fellowship and growth though require that you must change it up. If you hang with the group you always hang with, you’re never going to grow in a biblical understanding of fellowship or stretch spiritually. Sadly, you’re more likely to harden yourself within the lines of a closed circle and clique.

  So let’s commit as a church family to resist the cultural lies that personal happiness, individualism, me-time must take precedence over connections that we have with others in our church family. Too often we run from uncomfortable, even painful, redemptive relationships that God has placed us in. The tune of radical individualism has been playing in our ears at full volume nearly all our lives. We’re dancing to the music with gusto and it’s costing us dearly. It’s costing us a close walk with the Lord. It’s also costing our church family and hindering God’s will, glory and plan. 

Looking for quality used Christian books and other types of books at prices lower than even Amazon. Check out our family's online used bookstore at resurrectedreads.com.