The New Community

I don’t know about you, but these days being a follower of Jesus feels like a high-pressure gig. Obviously, we are not in danger of getting fed to the lions, but it seems like every decision with our time and money, how we work and raise kids, where we live and who we vote for has the weight of eternity riding on it. All our choices are out there as affirmations or indictments on the sincerity of our faith. It is overwhelming! 

Which is, at least in part, why I am excited and hopeful about the five-week sermon series we started this past Sunday called “The New Community.” It is going to explore how following Jesus begins and ends simply by how we are willing to gather around the Lord together. That at Kairos, we do not value “living in real community” through smaller groups simply so we can better meet the demands of faith, but instead, we see being invited to put down our defenses and judgments and learn to love others well as the great gift Jesus has offered us. That the ability to be the church is the good news! 

Therefore, I am praying bold things for this series. I am praying that we might leave these Sundays reoriented. Acutely aware and feeling a great sense of hope knowing the Lord could have easily come to earth as a king and imposed His ways upon the world, but he did not. He could have simply brought forth the power of his isolated miracles down upon the whole earth and healed the social and physical ails of our broken world but that was not his chosen way. Jesus could have avoided so many of the unpleasant, final chapters of his life and appeared as nothing more than a teacher who gave us a simple, understandable blueprint for how to live perfectly, but Jesus did not choose that path. 

No, how did God decide to change the world? By hanging out with people, by forming community. Creation is on a path to redemption because Jesus came and showed a few people that a way of love and sacrifice, even it leads to death, is indeed the way of life. And then the Lord loved us in such a way that we felt invited and worthy to be defined by that new reality with one another. 

It is amazing. We participate in the Kingdom by being the church. Full stop.  

And at least for me, that not only sounds new, it sounds like something I long to be a part of. Grateful to figure out what it looks like together. 

Grace and peace,

Drew