Why Do I Need to Be Involved in a Church Community?
Behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Acts 8:27-31
If you found yourself on a deserted island for twenty years with no one around, but you had a Bible to read, and even a small chapel to pray in, I would venture to say that you would end of losing your faith in God. Why? Because at some point in the twenty years, you would have a doubt, or a question or a temptation, or a frustration with God, and without the support of anyone, you would inevitably fall away from God. If we are honest, we’ve all had the days we’ve wondered “is there really a God?” We’ve all had days that if we were to rank our relationship with God on a scale of 1 (weak) to 10 (strong), that we would rank it a zero or a one. And the problem then becomes, if our faith has bottomed out to a zero, how to we revive something that is “dead”? And the answer is, we don’t, we can’t. We get around other people and their faith revives our faith when it is a zero, and moves the needle higher when we are a one or a two.
There are many reasons to belong to a church community. One of them is in the Scripture verses that are part of this reflection, from the book of Acts. The story is told of an Ethiopian eunuch who was reading Scripture and not understanding it. Specifically, he had been reading the book of Isaiah the Prophet. He could read the words, but had no idea about their meaning. He even lamented to Philip, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:31) The truth is, even though we have Bibles and theology books at our disposal, and most of us are fluent in English (or some language), we still have a hard time understanding what we believe and how to apply that to our lives without some explanation. The church is also a place of learning—we have ministries that cater to how each age and stage of life learns. Sunday school and youth groups are for the young. The Sunday sermon, monthly bulletin, Bible studies, and retreats are for adults. There is a mechanism by which to transmit and translate the faith to every demographic in the community. And there are priests and teachers who excel in teaching others about the faith.
There is strength in numbers, whether we are talking about a full church on Sundays, or a small room filled with ministry participants. That strength is manifested in encouragement, validation, affirmation and in material help. Enthusiasm is contagious, so when a community is enthusiastically moving together in unity towards Christ, this enthusiasm is contagious. It brings others in and brings them closer to Christ.
One of the things each Christian is commanded to do is to love their neighbor. This is done through service. There is only so many ways I can serve others alone. But when a group of people gets together to serve, they are able to do exponentially more than one single person can do. For instance, it would be hard to organize a clothing drive all alone, but in doing it as a group, there is a lot of clothing that could be collected and distributed. Even more basic, I may not even know how I can help or who needs help. The church community functions in some ways as a clearing house to understand and fulfill needs for service.
In the parish where I serve, we have five core values of our community on the wall of our parish hall and on all of our literature. They are LOVE-WORSHIP-COMMUNITY-LEARNING-SERVICE. Love requires the presence of others, because love by definition is expressed from one person to another. Worship is always done in the context of community. In order to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, there has to be at least one other person present. Even two people can comprise a “community.” There can be no “community” of one. One of our core values is “community,” which could also be renamed as “fellowship.” Fellowship does not necessarily have to be serious. Laughing over a cup of coffee, dancing at a festival or a dinner dance, these are examples of fellowship that takes place in the context of community. We’ve already mentioned the church at a platform for both service and learning.
A church community is like an organism. It is alive, it breathes, it moves, and it does these things because of the people who are part of it. A very misguided church leader from the early years of my ministry used to call the church “an organization to which I belong,” as if to say it was a country club. The church community is not just an organization, but an organism, it’s not just something we do, but something that we are, it is a part of our identity. And we, the community members, are the ones that allow the church to thrive, to breathe, to move, to help and to serve. We need to belong to a church community because on some days, WE need to be served through love, worship, fellowship, learning and service. And on the other days, we need to be looking for others, inside and outside our church community, that we can minister to with gestures of love, worship, community, learning and service. We need to belong to a church community because one of the two greatest commandments is to love our neighbor, and we do this through service. And while one does not need to be at church in order to serve others, the church community provides both the platform and the encouragement for us to love our neighbors, thus aiding us in staying obedient to this commandment. If being part of the church is part of our identity, then the church becomes something we are involved with regularly, not just a few times a year. The church should be like a family, and we should be involved in the church frequently, the way we are with our own families. And with family involvement comes both serving and being served.
Lord, thank You for the resources that we have to help us understand our faith. Thank you for the Scriptures and theology books we are able to read. Thank You for church communities that give us places where we can be loved, worship, share in fellowship, learn and serve. Please help me to see my involvement in a church community as part of who I am. Open my eyes to see what I can offer the church and in which ministries I can be serve. In my times of need, please give my community eyes to see how I need help in my faith. Give me eyes to see how I can help others in their faith. Amen.
Why do we need to be involved in a church community? Because the community is where we go for encouragement, worship, fellowship, education and service and where we can become encouragers for others to do the same. Please give serious consideration and prayerful thought to how and where you can best serve in your church community.
