In 2020: Ask Not What Your Church Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do For Your Church

If your primary aim is to gain a sense of community, it will always allude you.

In our consumeristic society, there are many who move from organization to organization, from one friend network to another friend network, and, yes, from one church to another church in pursuit of community. They pursue community directly.  A sense of community is often perceived (in consumeristic terms) as a religious commodity that the church dispenses for all who long for it.  Yet, after a while, people are shocked that their direct pursuit of community often comes up short.

What has gone wrong? They have not understood that some ideas are rightly considered by-products of aiming at something else; some pursuits are by-products of other more central pursuits. Community falls within this dynamic.

Community is the by-product of aiming and pursuing something else. Community is cultivated by loving and serving others.  Think about Mother Teresa.  She created community not by directly pursuing community but rather by loving and serving others. Eventually there arose around Mother Teresa an extraordinary global community. People would flock from all corners of the globe to Calcutta to be part of this incredible community that was cultivated not by pursuing (and wanting and longing for community) but rather was created by love and service. The same holds true in the local church.

I love what Paul Miller in A Loving Life writes: “You don’t find community, you create it through love.”  If you are desperate for community, begin by loving and serving those around you.[1]

The general axiom that applies to forming community in a local church is this: the more you intentionally love and serve others, the more community you will experience.  That is, community is created through intentional expressions of love and purposefully serving alongside others.

In 2020, tweak the famous words of John F. Kennedy into a theological mantra: “Ask not what your church can do for you, ask what you can do for your church.”  If you do, you might just find what you are looking for – a true community of faith. 

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[1] Paul Miller, A Loving Life, p. 100.

Miller also writes, “Instinctively, we hunt for a church or community that makes us feel good.  It is good to be in a place where you are welcome, but making that quest central is idolatry. And like all idolatry, it ultimately disappoints. But if we pursue hesed love, then, wherever we go, we create community. Here are two different formulas for community formation:

Search for community where I am loved….become disappointed with community

Show hesed love [a sacrificial, covenantal love]....create community.”