Imagine a concrete room, not much bigger than a parking space. No window. You’re in there 23 hours a day, 7 days a week; you don’t know when you’ll get out of this room. A month? A year? A decade?

Our minds don’t do well with that kind of solitude and uncertainty.

So begins a recent episode of Hidden Brain, one of my favorite podcasts.

Throughout my ministry I’ve been reminded in many ways why early in the Bible, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” One of Satan’s most cruel and effective tactics is to provoke us to hide when we are caught in grief or guilt or depression. When Adam and Eve sinned, their first instinct was to hide. As one one of my favorite pastor friends recently reminded me, when God came looking for Adam and Eve that day, he addressed their loneliness before he addressed their sin. His first question to them was not, “What have you done?” but “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)

God did not create us to function alone; we need each other. When God’s people withhold themselves from their local church body, they are robbing that church and the Church of gifts and abilities that do not belong to them personally. Those gifts belong to their local church. Outside of a local church fellowship much of the New Testament remains safely hypothetical. What does it mean to be bear with one another in love, or to spur one another on toward love and good deeds? These things are meaningless when you are not getting your hands dirty, and sometimes your feelings hurt, by a group of people who are all over the map in their spiritual maturity.

A church is not a museum for finished works of art. Rather, it is a hospital for sick people. In a regular hospital, sometimes even the medical personnel get sick. In the church, occasionally even very spiritually mature people give in to the flesh and act in immature ways. It happens. We know that sometimes we will let each other down, so we make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit and work to build trust in one another.

What are some practical outworkings of this?

1. Form Relationships: Connect and be consistent in investing in a Community group. The gospel travels across relationships. Most hands-on ministry is deployed within small groups. Each of our community groups, from the oldest adults to the smallest among us, have a deacon assigned to assist in shepherding care. When in crisis and you need your church family, the first and best place to connect is with the deacon of your community group and with other members of the group. It is in these groups where we can love and be loved, serve and be served, know and be known, celebrate and be celebrated.

2. Be Accountable: When you can’t be present, let the people in your group know in advance. Treat it in the same way as if you were having dinner with close friends. If it turned out you couldn’t make it, you would let them know.

3. Communicate: When people must be away from your community group, be sure they know they were missed. A simple text or email will do. Do this even when you know why someone is missing. We all need to be reminded that we are loved and that we belong. It is especially necessary to keep an eye out for those who seem to keep themselves on the fringes. Sometimes people are missing because Satan has convinced them that their presence doesn’t matter. Others may feel like they don’t really fit in. Simply letting them know their presence was missed will counter Satan’s lie and help restore them to the fellowship.

It breaks my heart when a person who is a part of our church fellowship becomes estranged. It is very much as if one of my children has withdrawn from the family. I grieve. It keeps me awake at night. Sometimes people move away because God is calling them to serve somewhere else in another church body. However, when someone gradually leaves the church because of some misunderstanding, this almost always is, at its core, a failure of community. The gospel provokes us to reach out and welcome all kinds of people regardless of their differences or what sort of sin they struggle with. As pastor and author Tim Keller says, “We are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope – at the very same time.” Let’s take that love and acceptance and shower it on one another diligently.

Our Easter series continues Sunday with a message on John 20:12-23 called Jesus, Continued. You can read the outline for that message here.

Gene

P.S. Please read an important message from Ben about an update to the church office schedule in an email also coming out today.