Birthmarks of the Church: Stories from the Book of Acts
11/13/2005 - A Devotion to Community
This morning we continue our series called Birthmarks of the Church with a look at the importance of community. This was a difficult week for the Philadelphia Eagles community. Did anyone happen to hear about the little misunderstanding between the Eagles organization and a certain wide receiver this week? Did anybody catch that little back page story in the newspaper?
Apparently, Terrell Owens said some things that offended coach Andy Reid and quarterback Donovan McNabb, almost got into a locker room brawl with a former teammate, got himself suspended for four games, and then kicked off the team for the rest of the season, but other than that things were pretty quiet down at the Nova Center this week!
Those of us who follow the Eagles have wondered since the summer how the T. O. situation would be resolved. He was not a happy camper when he arrived at training camp in July and not a whole lot changed over the last three months. And as a result the lack unity and community on the team has taken its toll. And so the Eagles, who last year made it to the Super Bowl, are now mired in last place two games behind the division leading New York Giants.
But individuals don't win Super Bowls. Teams win Super Bowls. And teams that get along, teams that have chemistry, teams that enjoy a sense community, where everybody feels valued and like they belong have the best chance of winning championships. So the hope is that with T. O. gone the Eagles can get focused on winning again. They can become a team again. Community is important on a football team.
Community is important in a marriage too. Yesterday, at Rob & Lisa's wedding I spoke about the importance of community in their relationship. In Genesis 2:24, the foundational passage on marriage, God says, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Oneness is God's goal for marriage. But oneness is not something you achieve and then sit back and enjoy forever. You move in and out of oneness. It's dynamic. It ebbs and flows. And it takes relational work and effort to maintain it. Because conflict invades every marriage and conflict can destroy community, but confession and brokenness can restore it.
We saw that this week too. At one point, Terrell Owens read a statement of apology in front on his New Jersey home, standing next to his agent, surrounded by a sea of media. And he appeared broken and contrite. He seemed sorry for what he said and for what he did. But unfortunately his confession came too late to repair the damage that he had done.
Community is important on a football team. Community is important in a marriage. And community is important in a church. In fact, community is a birthmark of the church. There is no church without community, at least not the kind of church that Jesus envisioned when he said, "On this rock I will build my church."
In this series we're looking at the birthmarks of the church, the non-negotiables for God's people. What should we be devoted to at Valley View Community Church? Where should we be investing our time and energy? What are the practices that will empower us to accomplish our mission and make a difference in this world for Jesus Christ?
So far we've looked at four birthmarks. The gift of the Holy Spirit. A passion for Jesus Christ. A devotion to the apostle's teaching. And a devotion to the breaking of bread. Last week, we said that the first church was devoted to eating together and to remembering the Lord together in the breaking of the bread.
The key word there is "together." That word appears twenty-four times in the book of Acts and is used mostly of the church. The church was together a lot. They met together to pray (1:14, 2:42, 4:24), they met together for teaching (2:42), they met together to eat and to break bread (2:42, 46, 20:7), they met together to worship (5:12), they met together to communicate needs and to respond to those needs (6:2), they met together to report on what God was doing in their lives and through their lives (14:27). They valued being together.
That's what it means when we read in Acts 2:42 , They devoted themselves to the fellowship (or to the community), to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
The early church understood that a commitment to Christ meant a commitment to one another. The thought of following Christ alone was inconceivable for those in the first church. They needed each other. They depended on each other. They took care of each other. They looked out for each other. They covered each other's back. Because their leader said, "If you love me, I want you to love one another. Everyone will know you're my followers if you love each other." Following Jesus was never meant to be a solo sport. It was always meant to be a team game. So they were devoted to community.
The word community means "common life" and at its core is this fierce desire that every one of us has to find connection and closeness with other people, a sense that we belong. There's nothing worse than feeling on the outside or feeling like we don't belong. We've all felt that from time in time and it's horrible.
In his book, Effective Church Leadership: Building on the Twelve Keys, Kennon Callahan writes, "People come to a church longing for, yearning for, hoping for this sense of roots, place, belonging, sharing, and caring. People come to a church in our time with a search for community, not for committee. We make the mistake of assuming that by putting people on a committee, they will develop ownership for the objectives of the church. People are not looking for ownership of objectives or for functional, organizational, institutional goals. Their search is far more profound and desperate than that. They are looking for home, for relationships. They are looking for the profound depths of community."
This week I received an email from a woman in our church who expressed how thankful she is for the community here at Valley View. And I asked her if I could share a portion of her email with you because I thought it would encourage you and some of you may see yourself in her story. And she said, "Sure. Please do."
In it she writes, "I was raised in a very traditional, legalistic Christian home, but it was one filled with lots of love ... I accepted Jesus as my Savior as a young child, and my life revolved around the church ... I married a man with a very similar upbringing only to discover that he was very controlling, manipulative, and abusive, all under the guise of religion and guilt. He severely crushed my spirit and I almost lost myself as I headed for a breakdown. Somehow, I found the courage, with little support of my family (except for my father) to file for divorce."
"Up until the time of my divorce, I was deeply immersed in church and women's bible studies. But when I initiated the divorce, I was publicly 'flogged' in front of my 'discipleship' group and my church membership was revoked because I would not seek counsel from the elder board. I lost my entire social structure, my family for a long time, my church, and my perceived relationship with God."
"I have been divorced now for almost fourteen years. For over a decade, I could not set foot in a church because it represented so much pain. As I began to heal and redefined the spiritual part of me, I sought out a church to attend. I tried eighteen churches before I finally found Valley View. It was the first place where I felt loved and accepted for who I am."
"Over the years, the only way I have learned to survive and protect myself is to keep people out of my life. So while attending Valley View, I have made it a practice to sneak in and out of each service to avoid any real contact with others ... rationalizing to myself that I am going to church, so that is all I really need."
"But recently, I have heard you talk about the importance of community. And in church last Sunday, during communion, I felt like I was hit with a brick. For the first time since my divorce, I felt a longing once again to be a part of the community of which you speak as I realized that I am valuable and I am not alone in this thing called life. I have the Lord, and I have a family, and I need them and it is okay that I do. So for the first time in years (more than I can count) I approached someone last week for a hug and said, 'I need prayer, can you please pray with me?'"
People come to a church longing for, yearning for, hoping for a sense of roots, place, belonging, sharing, and caring. And that woman found it here, with you, in our community. For a long time she would sneak in and out of our gatherings not wanting any real contact with people. But now she is taking the risk to let herself be known. She wants to enjoy a deeper level of community and that requires authenticity.
Authenticity is a powerful component of community. Being real with each other is essential to developing genuine, meaningful relationships. It's hard to do that unless we're willing to take the risk to let ourselves be known.
In the book called The Connecting Church Larry Crabb writes, "The future of the church depends on whether it develops true community. We can get by for a while on size, skilled communication, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense that we belong to each other, with masks off, the vibrant church of today will become the powerless church of tomorrow. Stale, irrelevant, a place of pretense where sufferers suffer alone, where pressure generates conformity rather than the Spirit creating life - that's where the church is headed unless if focuses on community."
This idea of being authentic is so important to community that the first recorded sin of the first church was a breach of authenticity. The story is found in Acts 5.
Let's start with Acts 4:36, Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), 37sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.
Now look at Acts 5:1-11, Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. 2With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet. 3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." 5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. 6Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him. 7About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?" "Yes," she said, "that is the price." 9Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also." 10At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. 11Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
Wow! What's up with that? If that's what happens in church I'm not sure I want to be here! Let me summarize it for you. A man by the name of Joseph sells a piece of property that he owns and he donates all the money from the sale to the Jerusalem church. And the apostles are so humbled by his generosity and so encouraged by his gift that they change his name to Barnabas, "Son of Encouragement." He later goes on to become a leader in the church and a close friend of the apostle Paul.
Well, a couple in the church named Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, see the praise that Barnabas receives for his generosity and think that's pretty cool. So they sell a piece of their real estate. They bring money from the sale and give it to the apostles pretending that it's the entire amount. But it's not. They keep some of the proceeds for themselves, which was fine, but they pretend to be more generous then they really are because they want to be big shots in the church too. But Peter says, "What are you doing lying to the Holy Spirit!?" And within three hours both Ananias and Sapphira are dead. And God sends a strong message to the church about truth telling and being authentic and not pretending to be more than we really are.
On Wednesday night, with the group gathered in our home, we were talking about the importance of humility and brokenness to the community here at Valley View. No one around here feels like they've arrived. We're all in process. No one is a finished product and no one ever will be. I love the fact that Valley View gives me lots of grace and room to keep growing and learning and discovering how fouled up I really am and how patient God is with me. We all need that. But we can only get that room to grow if we're honest about the fact that we need it.
Authenticity is essential to community. The church was designed by God to be a dangerous place to lie, but to be a safe place to be honest and to be real. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. You know who wrote that? The apostle Peter who never forgot what happened to Ananias and Sapphira.
Let's not stop sharing our stuff with one or two trusted friends, because if we do stop we will become stale, irrelevant, a place of pretense where sufferers suffer alone, where pressure generates conformity rather than the Spirit creating life.
Community is a wonderful thing. Community is a mysterious thing. It's impossible to put a formula on community or to standardize it for everyone. Relationships cannot be programmed. So we don't try to program or assign relationships at Valley View. Instead, we offer environments like the one right now and a variety of smaller ones that happen throughout the week where people can get to know each other and begin to build meaningful, trusting relationships.
Our desire is that everyone here be connected in community at some level and feel a sense of belonging because we were never meant to walk alone in our journey with Jesus. We were always meant to walk together. They were devoted to the community in the first church and we are devoted to community in this church.
Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian who has written a great deal about community once said, "Community is not the most important thing God is doing. It is the only thing, ultimately, that God is doing in history, because it is the only thing that will remain for eternity."
Jesus put it this way in John 14:2-3, In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
That's where the journey is headed. That's where this adventure leads. To our Father's house, to God's happy home at the center of the universe where we will finally and forever feel that sense of belonging and love that we all so desperately crave, where we will finally be all together in God's eternal family.
This week I read the story of a persecuted pastor in Turkmenistan who takes great comfort in that. He said, "When I came to faith in Jesus in the early 1990's, you, the worldwide Body of Christ, came into my life as well. I know that I belong to a large family now who pray and care for me. I'm very grateful for what you do, for your prayers and your support." Community, both in a local body like Valley View and in the global Body of Christ is a birthmark of the church.