Being in Community means that we must actually “touch” each other.
In the missionary community, it is common to talk about community, a lot, but then to act, work, and live more independently.
It is for good reason, at least on the surface. We have different giftings, and different personalities. We feel God moving us in different directions than others. We “know” what we should be doing and how we should be doing it and we don’t really want to hear otherwise. It is easier, and certainly more expedient, to keep community in its proper place.
In I Peter 2, the apostle talks about community in a way that has surprised me. Peter says that we are being built up into a spiritual house.
There is only one place where this construction will actually build a spiritual house and that is on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ and on the foundation that he has laid.
First Corinthians, 3:11 says, “For no one can lay a foundation. Other than that, which is already laid, which is Jesus Christ”.
It is on this foundation, on this Cornerstone, on this Living stone, we also like living stones grow into a spiritual house.
In the Old Testament the spiritual house was the temple, or the Tabernacle. The place of God's presence.
In the center was the holy of holies where the high priest could enter and where God's glory resided among men. Yet at the moment of Jesus death, the great curtain that had closed the holy of holies ripped or from top to bottom signaling the end of limited access to God or access only through an intermediary.
It was the end of God's presence primarily in a place and the beginning of God's presence in a living house. We are that house both as individuals and as a community of believers.
We are not just a bunch of stones strewn about on a field laying apart from one another. A building, whether it's spiritual or physical, can only be built when the stones are actually touching each other.
A building, spiritual or physical, can only be built when the stones are actually touching each other.
God wants to build us as a community of Believers together, but sometimes we'd like to be the builders of our own community house. But every time we try that it goes rather poorly.
As a community, we are being built into a spiritual house, a place of safety, of growth, and of care, and of love.
Whether as a missionary on the field, or at home, God desires that we are in such close contact with each other that we are “touching”… on all sides!
Allowing ourselves to be touched and touching others gives God the ability to then build us into a spiritual house, as Peter has described. We have heard the slogan, “Better together”. But God desires to do His work in the world with us in close contact with each other.