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For most of us in America, community is a new concept. We tend to be pretty isolated and independent. We think we don’t need people. And, we carry this mentality over into the church. Most people have the mistaken idea that church is just a place that you go to once a week in order to hear a message from the “man of God.” Many of us live the rest of our lives independently from the church. Yet one of the reasons so many people today are lonely, stressed out, sick, depressed or have a lot of other problems is that they do not have any real fellowship with anyone around them. They don’t have community.

God never intended us to do life alone. He intended us to live life in community, to have real, interdependent relationships with others.

So, what is community? Webster defines it as: a group of people leading a common life according to a rule; or the sense of sharing and intimacy that develops among persons who experience a lack of social status or rank as a group. A simple definition is: doing life together, or learning to do life together.

When Jesus came, he demonstrated this kind of living. To live like Him, we must:

Value others more than our own personal agendas. If we’re honest, we all have agendas. And, if we’re not careful, we tend to value our agendas higher than people, higher than relationships. We start to push people aside in order to try to accomplish our agenda. Jesus was the opposite of that.Take time to get involved with others and not just focus on ourselves. He’s not just talking about your immediate family, people who love you, but also about people who might not be able to give back - the weak, the oppressed, the poor, etc. Are there others like these in your life?Understand that life on this earth involves sacrifice for others - our death on the cross. Think about your life. How many people are you laying your life down for? Honestly, most of us aren’t used to sacrificing. But, the reason the church in America is not “getting it done” is because they’re just going to church and not being the church. Unless there’s a shift in this area, we’re going to lose the war for people’s souls in this nation and it’s going to go down.

Something has gone wrong with the church. Somewhere along the way, we’ve reverted to the Old Testament way of doing things - where we are separated into two groups: the hierarchy of the priests/clergy/church leadership, and the common people. We’ve traded off relationship for the devil’s counterfeit: religion. The church in America has largely become a pulpit driven organization where the leaders are the ones who hear from God and the “common people” have to rely upon the leaders to know what God’s saying and what they’re supposed to do. It’s dependency on man, rather than on our own personal relationship with God, and…it’s idolatry.

We’ve fallen for the lie that the Christian life is about going to church and doing certain things, rather than living in relationship. We think God is going to change America by reviving us at meetings with special speakers, but God never intended for the church to be just a weekend service. It wasn’t about going to a meeting at all. It was about relationship, about community. The earliest believers went from house to house sharing their lives with one another and applying the apostle’s doctrine to everyday life. As they did this, God added to their number daily. Hundreds and thousands of people were getting saved every day because they were living in community. Their larger gatherings were only a celebration of what God was doing in community.

Yet, we as a church have resisted being in community. Why? Because we’ve gotten used to doing things the religious way. Religion, after all, feels much safer than relationship. And, we have such a hard time, when we’ve been immersed in one thing, to accept something new. If we’re honest, most of us feel pretty satisfied with our lives as they are without community. But, that’s not biblical or effective. God is not going to change the world or our nation by gathering people together to meet in buildings, but He will do so in the context of authentic growing relationships.

It’s time to embrace a new lifestyle with God. In order to do so, we have to be willing to let go of the old lifestyle. Getting yourself into a small group will require a change, but it’s worth it. If you keep doing what you’ve always done and expect something to change, you’re insane. You’ll never get in community if you’re not willing to change.

Believe me, I understand that letting go of the old lifestyle is not easy, but you have to take drastic measures. Adjust your schedule, cut off the internet and/or cable, do whatever it takes or you won’t ever change. It’s only when we let go of the old lifestyle that we will experience the newness of what God is doing!

God is doing a new thing in the church today and it’s magnificently powerful. He’s moving in community. When people get in community, God shows up. So, my goal in the next six weeks is to get your focus off of pulpit driven church and onto relational community. I want to challenge you: if you want to experience the fullness of life that God intends, if you want to see real growth, if you want God to change our city, our nation and our world, get into community by joining a V•Group this week. This is what community looks like!

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