Sermon Cloud

COMMUNITY is hard.  It’s hard to find, hard to keep, and hard to lose.  But almost everyone we know wants to be a part of it.  Why?  Because we were created for it.

We need community for all kinds of reasons.  It provides us with security, friendship, a sense of belonging, and more.  Without it, we can’t fully obey God’s commands to love Him and each other.

Read Acts 2:42-47

In Greek, this word is koinonia—what’s been called fellowship for most of recent church history.  Typically, “fellowship” is Christianese for have fun with other believers.  Bowling, eating, watching the Super Bowl, standing around with coffee after church—it’s all fellowship as long as you’re with Christians and there is food involved.

Since there wasn’t bowling or football in the ancient church, koinonia must mean something else.

Read the passage from Acts again.  How does it go on to explain what life together looked like in the Jerusalem community?

Koinonia literally means:  partnership - i.e. (literally) participation, or (socially) communication, or (materially) giving aid or support.

• What are the essential functions that life together involves?
• What has brought you here?  Have you liked what you saw?

But how do we experience this?  Read verse 42 - Devote (di-vot) vt..

• To give or apply onself to a particular activity or cause.

• To set apart for a specific purpose or use

• To set apart by or as if by a vow or solemn act.

If you want this, you make it happen.  Hearing all the reasons why getting together outside of Sunday is hard – we are giving all the excuses for “why not”.

Don’t cop out – apathy is easy.

Is something in Acts 2 resonates with you, then bring that piece of it to the table.  You are created for community.  You have been given spiritual gifts for community.

It takes work.

Today it is often difficult for people to contemplate conversion to Jesus if that means distancing themselves from their existing networks, especially if those are the bonds of a minority community, such as those found in the gay community or among ethnic minorities.

Jesus tells us that it is quite possible that for someone to become His follower might mean the loss of the closest relationships – parent to child (Matthew 10:34-39).

This person needs a new home.  In Threads we have found that some people wanting to be a part of our church community not initially because they were interested in Jesus but because they wanted a kinder, gentler alternative to their existing network of relationships.

In some cases they wanted to leave a substance abusing group of friends.  Others were depressed and realized that their isolation was leading to suicidal tendencies.

1. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. “      Ephesians 2:19-22

• From this passage, how would you describe God’s attitude towards community?

• Why do you think Paul uses a building analogy to make his point here?

 The central point to community is to be a people where God can live, a people where he can be present in the world.  All other functions of community must exist to build this home that God is creating.

 We are:

 The community of the Holy Spirit (II Cor. 13:14) in community with God’s Son (I Cor. 1:9):

• Sharing our lives (I Thessalonians 2:8)
• Sharing our property (Acts 4:32)
• Sharing in the Good News (Phil 1:5, Philemon 6)
• Sharing in Christ’s suffering and glory (II Cor. 1:6-7)

 All of this is celebrated and reinforced in communion where we participate (koinonia) together in the body and blood of Jesus (I Cor. 10:16-17).

 Priest and professor Henri Nouwen describes the impact that sharing the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, can have on a community.  Indeed, he says that “the Eucharist creates community as well as expresses it”.

 He tells of a group of people who came together for the purpose of sharing Communion — “people [who] would never have chosen each other as friends or companions...discovered a bond based not on physical or emotional attractiveness, social compatibility or common interests, but on the presence of the living Christ among them.”