Community Matters!

Challenging quote from The Connecting Church, by Randy Frazee:

Community matters. That's about like saying that oxygen matters. As our lungs need air, so our souls require what only community provides. We were designed by our Trinitarian God (who himself is a group of three persons in profound relationship with each other) to live in relationship. Without it, we die. It's that simple. Without community where we know, explore, discover, and touch one another, we experience isolation and despair that drive us in wrong directions, that corrupt our efforts to live meaningfully and love well.

The future of the church depends on whether it develops true community. We can get by for a while on size, skilled communication, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense we blong to each other, with masks off, the vibrant church of today will become the powerless church of tomorrow. Stale, irrelevant, a place of pretense where sufferers suffer alone, where pressure generates conformity rather than the Spirit creating life -- that's where the church is headed unless it focuses on community.