You need them.

Let me pinpoint a little issue...

It's probably ironic that I am sitting on my bedroom floor writing this article on community. It doesn't make much sense to be hidden away from the rest of my immediate community to write.

The sad thing is, nowadays, it feels I so often get tired of being with people and I often want to retreat. And I want to do it in the name of Christ. I need to be alone with Jesus...I need rest...I need time alone with the Lord...

My main question: when did our faith become so individualistic that we cut a community God made for us to be with using His Holy name? When did the individualism of the West get stamped with approval from God - and did I miss the legal signing of that into order? Did my individual faith get in the way of me encouraging my brother or sister in Christ one too many times?

I get quite scared of myself sometimes - and yet I somehow do not fear myself that much to not spend time alone. But is it truly time alone with God? And is it no wonder that I have often felt down or alone or sad or discouraged?

These are questions I often ask myself and wrestle with, and no doubt, when I am tired, I get more emotional regarding the solutions. But I have been learning a great deal about the church in Acts - considering I am writing an assignment on it for my Acts class - and I realized something very important: the apostles, disciples and members of the church body are often in a community praying, worshipping, praising God. The apostles are often travelling to church bodies where they have spread, encouraging them, discipling them, praying with them. They are not doing faith alone.

We need each other.

And I think Western culture has diminished this need, vainly applying the name of God to our desire for personal success, to be unique, to be honored above the God we claim we serve with our lives. Yes, in the name of our Creator in Heaven - who saw fit to provide Adam with a helper - we have thrown away every single one of our brothers and sisters in Christ, saying they do not fit within God's plan for our lives.

In a lacking effort to please God, we have only ever contented the desires of our flesh.

The Genesis of Community.

I have already referenced our design to be in community right from the beginning of creation, but I am sure that I am not the first person in your life to reference this verse as a reason to not be alone. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize a few helpful points:

"Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”" (Genesis 2:18)

After everything God had made good, there was a point in His creation whether something was "not good" and that was man not having someone with him to be his helper. I think any feminist would be offended by the term helper, but we would digress with such a ponderance. I think it is far more important to note that there is a break in God's pattern. If we were to just focus on the Lord, it was not that He had created evil, but He had not yet completed His creation. It was as if creation was in completion at the making of Eve.

So many would argue for the necessity of marriage (and not doubt, this passage is to endorse God's wonderful design of marriage) but let us not forget that man was alone with no other humanity. This means that there were no other human beings who could rule alongside Adam, there we no other human beings with which God could dwell, it was as if the animals themselves were in a better situation.

Let us also not forget that their command of Genesis 1:28 which called for Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply". This could not be done without Eve. Genesis 9:1 repeats the command to "be fruitful and multiply" to Noah. In Abraham, God promises to make his line "fruitful" (Genesis 17:6) - there would be children. And for centuries, this command would be offered to the Israelite people. There was going to be no reason for them to be alone. Part of God's covenant involved providing people.

The Acts Church illustrates Community.

I also just wanted to say, have any of us noticed how radical the church in Acts was? I mean, we look at the passages about the church and we think: well, that was a different time, there was a different ministry of the Spirit, and the faith of those people was stronger. We do not have to be like them...

To which I often question myself. I have recently come to the revelation that Paul was not necessarily some sort of super-Christian. Of course, he was inspired to write so much of the New Testament, but I do not believe that he was anyone particularly different from what the average Christian should look like. The fact is, the same Spirit is inside of us, and can empower us in our role on this earth to do wonderful things for Jesus.

So why not the same for the community that we see in the church in Acts? Why can't that be our churches today? At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and were a witness to those around them (16:25), the church in Acts made earnest prayer to God together because of persecution (12:5), many would gather together to pray (12:12). The sad thing is, how often are we gathering as a church to pray? And why are we not doing it more regularly?

The apostles spent great amounts of time with various churches all across the known world (9:19; 14:28; 15:33) which meant the church was spending a good deal of time with each other. The church would gather to hear testimonies and together would be encouraged by the witness of the apostles (14:22, 27; 15:3-4, 12, 32, 36; 16:5). There would be multiple leaders in a church who would work together to serve the body (8:14; 11:30; 14:23; 15:6).

And just as God's people would grow in number as promised in Genesis, God's family would grow through the spread of the gospel in Acts. Acts records this growth through its use of summary statements (2:47; 6:7; 11:21; 12:24). There is no doubt that God, amid all these people of faith, wants us to encourage, grow and disciple them. He has made us His hands and feet on this earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Community is as essential now as we see the gospel going forth into all the world. But how have we fallen so far from the church in Acts, a church that we could truly be like today?

Is this a problem with personality?

And this is not the difference between the extrovert and introvert. I think that would be the erroneous conclusion we could come to, that maybe those who get energy from being alone are self-centered. Whether or not the problem can be worsened by such a trait, I do not know. But I know this much, the extrovert can be just as cut off from brothers and sisters in Christ and fail to encourage, exhort, cherish, build up and love the body of Christ as the introvert.

The introvert may demonstrate they do not need the church by fleeing its very presence. The extrovert may demonstrate they do not need the church by not cherishing its very presence.

In the end, both are losses, and neither are loving their community well. We could spend all our time condemning the less hours one spends at the church, or serving the body, or pouring into ministry. We could look at those who are spending time with their brothers and sisters in Christ and say they do not truly love them but love the attention. We could judge a number of things, but that is not our role.

If reading Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards has taught me anything, it has shown me that we could spend our whole lives watching those around them, judging them for the way in which they express emotion, or don't; or the way they serve, or don't; or what they know, or don't. In the end, judging promotes disunity, just as feeling we do not need our church family grants no fellowship. Whether introvert or extrovert, I do not condemn the lack of time, or excess of time. I condemn vanity.

You Need Them, Not Vanity...

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

I branch off from this discussion of personality with an understanding, God has made us to have time for different things. Perhaps there are different seasons in our lives. I am currently going through a time of forgiveness, of healing, of learning love and what it means to remove anger and bitterness. There is a time for everything. Daily, there are times of quiet and time of loudness - at least that is what I would say.

But the most impactful word for me for the past couple of years has been "tension". It may also be synonymous with one other popular word: "balance". There is a balance between each time, and unfortunately, I blame our vanity, self-centeredness and individualism for the desire to push away community and believe we do not need them.

In a world that grows every more hostile to the Gospel and the Lord Jesus Christ, we need our church to grow ever stronger. There is no place for vanity and a drive personal success in a community that has one main purpose and goal. We strive to be the best on our own, and we learn we do it in vain. Colossians 3:23 says:

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men"

We might find the greatest success among men, but it is nothing if not for the Lord. And even if our communities banded together to do something great, that too is vanity, for we know that in Genesis 11, man's desire to "make a name for [themselves]" (vs.4), only ended with God disrupting their plans entirely. Yes, even community can be toxic.

But isn't there something wonderful about a community that seeks not after personal success, but the commands of the Lord? We need to serve the Lord, but we should do it community. When done correctly, it seems that the Christian community can have the effect described below.

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17)

Growth happens together. Unfortunately, that has been lost from our communities. The Church in Acts was not a "unique-to-that-time" kind of church. It was an illustration of a church so changed by the gospel that they knew the God they served; so dependent on the Spirit in hardship, that they prayed "earnestly"; so in love with the God they believed in, that they loved one another fiercely, enough to make intense sacrifices. They were a church with their own problems, and yet we notice how different they are from us.

Conclusion

Vanity has quietly attacked the Western Church and made us believe that our individual, personal relationship with God is the only thing in the world. And I don't think personality is to be condemned. I think our belief that we only need God has justified the sub-conscious, underlying desire of our hearts that longs to achieve what we alone desire. If truly seeking God's call as in Matthew 28 or Acts 1:8 or Matthew 22:37 for that matter, there is no indication we can do this faith on our own.

Indeed, I will not argue that Christ is all we need. But at the end of the day, our physical beings were made, literally, for community. Without it, God says creation is "not good". We are constantly forgetting that we are called to live in such community, that we are modelled such community in Scripture. Leaders will one day stand before the Living God and give an account for the souls they were taking charge of. Believer, could you see the souls that God has given you for such a time as this and say you ministered well?

Community is not to be thrown away, for God did not just throw them away into your life. He blessed you with people and called it "very good".

So, I ask, do you see this community as "very good"?

In fact, do you see you need them?