Community or Commission?

Community (def) - a feeling of fellowship with others due to sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. A huge buzzword in Christianity is community. With the deteriorated condition of the family, our country, and our world in general, many are trying to build "community" to battle the ills of our world. To be honest, sin and the world will always be deceiving and tearing at those of us who follow The Way. It is called persecution and Jesus guaranteed we were going to experience it if we followed Him. But along with that Jesus also said "Do not despair." Why would He say that? In Matthew 5:10 Jesus spoke the following words Matthew 5:10 God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. If we try to live "good" moral lives and teach our children to do the same that is a good thing and God's Word compels us to do just that. Then those truths of God's Word can be passed down from generation to generation and that is all good. The problem with making this a Biblical mandate is it contradicts another real mandate called The Great Commission. The community should be a by-product of commissioned people serving the Lord in harmony and conviction to follow the commission given by our Savior.

Community is not an end all to the problems in our world or our country. It is also not intended to push aside our commission to share the gospel. Our community should grow and fellowship should grow out of this mandate of truth, called The Great Commission. Commission (def) - a group of people officially charged with a particular function. The church, or the body of believers, is officially charged by Jesus to do this function, make disciples. Matthew 28:18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” You can see one word that is dynamic for the command and that word is GO! This negates our tendency to have a "holy huddle" that can become very closed and ineffective. If the community is built on "feelings" and not on the Word of God, we got problems, and the first problem is a dead fellowship. That fellowship may seem good to those who are part of the "community", but if that group is not driven by the command to GO in their very identity and purpose, then that community is more a detriment to the commands of Jesus than a help and it will accomplish little or nothing. If it becomes too closed that community will be an affront to the commission of Jesus. It will become a club.

I believe in great fellowship and the koinonia fellowship in Acts 4 was a strong example of community, but God wanted that community to remember to GO. Here is the type of community they had Acts 4:32 All the believers were united in heart and mind. And they felt that what they owned was not their own, so they shared everything they had. 33 The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all. 34 There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them 35 and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need. Here is what happened at the height of their communal living. Acts 8:1 A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria. 2 (Some devout men came and buried Stephen with great mourning.) 3 But Saul was going everywhere to destroy the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison.

God in His infinite wisdom and power used a man by the name of Saul to persecute and cause that community to be scattered from Jerusalem to larger regions and the gospel continued to grow. Then Jesus meets this man Saul on his way to persecute more believers and change his life so he will fine-tune The Great Commission and reach the whole world, and not just the Jews. The people are drawn to each other by their common interests and then God scatters them to expand the reach of that community to follow a greater thing, The Great Commission. Community or Commission? BOTH! The church is connected by the Holy Spirit for strength and growth and then we GO. It comes back to the point "Have we lost our FIRST love, and is our reason for community God-centered, or humanistic?

Community is good if it has the commission at its heart. Time to get back to the core of who we are and the church will thrive and once again be an effective tool to reach a lost and dying world. When we have reaching the world for Jesus the persecution is the least of our problems because God also protects His church at every turn. Go in power and in God's grace.

Vesselogical Out,

David Warren