One of my greatest joys in life is the close relationships and love I have for those I work with. Twelve years ago, I was introduced to a young man who had recently begun walking with Jesus. Today Chris Bryant is the Community Pastor at LifePoint Church. He not only leads our community ministries but is first a fruit of God’s work among our community. This post is the first part of an introduction into the fellowship of LifePoint Church through our community group ministry.
Pastor Lane
+++++
I recently invited a couple struggling in their relationship to come to my community group. They looked at each other only to look back at me and give me a host of reasons why they simply couldn’t come. I then invited them over to my house for dinner. They immediately replied with an enthusiastic, “Yes.”
There are many reasons that identify why this couple sees becoming part of a community group as a burden, as something they just don’t have time or even a desire to participate in. They are not alone. As a community pastor who spends much of his time helping people connect in community, I have witnessed this across all demographics. Too often, community is not something that we “get to do” but instead something we “have to do.” Community is seen as another plate to spin amidst a life of a hundred already spinning plates. We simply don’t have room to spin any more plates.
This is not what “Life Together,” as we refer to it at LifePoint, was ever intended to be by God.
When God saves us in Christ Jesus we are completely his. The full reality of that salvation is still to be worked out in this world where life is broken by sin. We still sin. God is still saving us daily from the practice and presence of the sin that remains. Though Christ’s righteousness is ours completely, his beautiful image in us is not yet complete. His love has much left to perfect in us. There is much growing up still to do.
Paul, alluding to this imagery when he wrote to the Ephesians, encouraged them not to be like children “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes,” but instead, he encouraged them to grow up into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” He follows with the prescription of how they are to mature when he writes, “Rather [instead of being tossed to and fro like a child], speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” And what is this truth we are to speak to one another? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”.
Paul’s instruction to the Ephesians is echoed throughout Scripture. Jesus came to save us from the penalty of sin. He also came to save us from sin altogether: here, today, now. Life together is the arena with which the saving work of Jesus is worked out and pressed through our lives, the way with which we grow up into the fullness of Christ. We share meals, missions, prayers, Bible studies, ballgames, and everything in between not because we want more people meddling in our lives but because we want more of Jesus in our lives. We want to grow as disciples of Jesus. Life together invites and fills every nook and cranny of our hearts and minds with Jesus. Community is not a burden we have to deal with but a gift that God has given to take hold of the fullness of Christ for all of life.
One of the most quoted passages of Scripture is John 3:16, where Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son, that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but would have eternal life.” What a glorious truth this is! Whoever. Anyone. Everyone. If you believe, no matter what is behind you, you will not perish but have eternal life. Child of God, do not stop there! There is so much more of Christ to be had. We will take hold of him and see his love perfected in us not in isolation, but together. John goes on to write in his first epistle, “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
God gave you me, and he gave me you that he might be everything in us. Let us together press on to make him our own because Christ Jesus has made us his own. To him alone be all glory.