Let me show you some reasons that I enjoy being part of a faith community. Firstly, church for me is a place of togetherness. We do life together.
If you read Acts 2, where Luke the author is describing the early church, he says in verse 44, “all the believers were together.” We come back to fellowship at church because we are united. We do life as a team. We’re stronger together.
Church as a Place of Togetherness
Now, someone once compared the church to a canopy of trees. He said, “I was walking in a beautiful grove. The trees were some distance apart, and the trunks were straight and rugged. But as they ascended higher, the branches came closer and closer together. And still higher, the twigs and branches interlaced and formed a beautiful canopy. I said to myself, ‘our churches resemble these trees that, near the earth, stand separate and wider apart. But the more nearly towards heaven they ascend, the closer they come together, until they form a beautiful canopy.’”
I think that’s true! I think we come to church because together we are stronger, and we form a community of shelter and of shade and of coolness and of happiness for each other. The closer we get, the more our lives become interlaced.
One Family With Many Differences
There’s a beauty to the togetherness in church that is hard to find elsewhere. Here we come as we are — all young, black, white. Happy, sad. Strong, weak. Believing, doubting. Enthusiastic, reluctant. But we come and we stand together as one.
The early Christians had to learn this, because there was a great divide between Jews and Gentiles in their time, very much like the racial divide in our own country, South Africa. It was difficult for them to stand together. But the church leaders, Paul and Peter, continually reminded them that even with their differences, they were one in Christ.
In fact, in 1958, the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, in the bad days of apartheid, made a statement that they would be a church that was “one and undivided”, a phrase that they still use a lot today.
I pray that the church you’re in will always be a church that stands out because of the togetherness in your differences.
Come to church. Come and be part of a church family where we try with all our hearts to be one and undivided in Christ our Lord.
Paul opens 1 Timothy 6 with respect between slaves and masters, and that respect belongs in every place we serve or lead. Treat the people above you and below you with dignity this week, starting with the one you find hardest to respect.