Community

Lately I've been a little frustrated. There's something missing and I know what it is. A few years ago we were part of a house church. We met for two or three hours in someone's home each Sunday and for most of that time each Sunday we sat together, facing each other in typical living room fashion and talked. It didn't take long before we knew a lot about what was going on in each other's lives.

And each week we heard (and gave) updates on jobs, children, health, spiritual growth, questions, problems and on and on. We each of us felt like the other folks were a large part of our lives and they and their families were all a large part of our lives- friends, not acquaintances.

We weren't all the same, to be sure, and we certainly didn't agree about everything, but it was a "family" and we were all invested in each other and each other's family. The time we spent building relationships wasn't rushed and it wasn't "shoehorned" into twenty minute coffee breaks with a hundred people all talking at once. It didn't take years and years before you felt like you knew some people and they in turn knew you.

Fellowship wasn't a side order- it was the main course. And Christ was glorified in it because he was the reason we were together.