What about all those strangers you saw yesterday?

Continued from last week's "Dead for a year and No One Noticed."

Yesterday I bet you saw a lot of people you will not see again till Christmas, unless you are called to do their funeral between now and then.  They are disconnected from the community of faith.  They have not part of the fellowship, the community of the faith.  As far as their spiritual walk is concerned they are like Yvette Vickers, dead and no one noticed.

The most important number from yesterday is not how many people attended Easter service.  The most important number from yesterday maybe how many people have a vague connection to faith but are not a part of the community.  These twice a year attendees have a tenuous connection to the faith but have no community, no belonging, no way to say "us' or "we" about faith.  It is all but impossible to over state the importance of community for the Christian faith.   For example... 

Jesus

The incarnation is about belonging to the community.  The Hero of the story enters history into a community of Mary, Joseph, and an oppressed people.  He lived in a community, made a habit of going to synagogue service, and was part of the construction industry.  Why not have God in flesh descend from the heavens on a cloud with glory?  Because we could never accept such a one into our community to be one of us.  For the Savior to save us, He had to be one of us and He could only do that by experiencing our reality of community.   Jesus was never alone.  Even when He was “alone” He was in the community of the Father.  He died in the community of the guilty, the hurting, the helpless, the humanity He came to save. 

The Church

Before His death He planned for the Church and on the day of Pentecost He established His church.  The very meaning of the word church implies the plurality of people in the solidarity of the community.  Church is never a place; it is always a people.  It is sometimes a local community, speaking a common language, with a common culture and heritage.  Sometimes it is a global army of love that stuns the world by the way they love one another.   But biblically it is never a single individual, it is never a building, it is never a person in isolation. 

Titus 2:11-14 

For the saving grace of God was revealed to all people, teaching us that having denied impiety and worldly desires, we shall live sensibly and righteously and in a godly manner in the present age, waiting for the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself on our behalf, so that He should redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people as His own special possession, zealous of good works.

The Saving Grace of God and the self-giving of Christ was so that a people, plurality, the group, the crowd, could be His own, pure and eager to do good works.  Jesus saves us individually, but he also saves us in a collective.  In saving the individual, He makes that individual a part of the community.  That community of faith is so much more powerful in doing good deeds than any individual.  By our very nature we are part of each other-belong to each other.  A Christian alone is like a finger severed from a hand, the finger is lost, but the whole person suffers.   (Believe me I know from personal experience)

The Future

At the end of the first century, a person identified with their city of origin, Saul of Tarsus was not the same man as Saul of Corinth.  The city was a place or corporate belonging, the community of people living together and sharing life.  It was a place where the citizens have their home, their belonging, and their identity.  In the book of Revelation, the home of the saved is described as a city.  Heaven is the eternal city of the saved; it is our common unity of belonging which we fore taste in the church. 

What?

What does all of this have to do with church calling programs we started talking about three weeks ago?  As the church we MUST have community.  At their best, church calling programs helped foster community in their day.  Perhaps you use Small Groups, The Shepherding System, Sunday School, or fellowship groups.  My great concern is that we have rejected old forms, in this case a calling program, without understanding what those forms were there to accomplish.  Your church needs to have an intentional approach to make sure everyone can be connected in community. The goal is not to pop in on people and hit them up for a commitment or rebuke them for an absence.  But it is to enable people to return or be a part of the community that is needed for their faith to flourish and the church to thrive.  It is about returning to our connections that will help us live out our lives as friends, followers, students of Jesus, aka Disciples of Christ. Because it is community that is the anvil of life upon which we shape a life of faith.