For "Real"

I just read a very interesting concept (for Bill Hybels’ book Axiom) dealing with two very different communities that can exist in every Church and organization (and possibly every relationship). One the one hand you have a goal or model community and that is the genuine or “real” community in which people serves, loves, and truly cares for one another even through burdens, hardships and inconvenient truths. And on the other hand you have the least desirable but actual and ever present pseudo or “fake” community and in this community there are good individuals but they will stop short of going the extra mile in relationships, they are not quite telling each other the full truth, they are just accommodating each other just tolerating each other.

Now as bad as the latter community sounds, unfortunately this pseudo “fake” community is one that most know and operate in from day to day, and even worse a church community can become a simulation or artificial for the “real” community. Even though we understand “fake” community is not the goal and the model that we desire, how many of us are still operating in “fake” communities.

Do something with me out of five of your current relationship that you are in (which are a part of a community), out of those five how many of those relationships are you just tolerating, not going to deep, not telling the whole truth, not dealing with the “elephants in the room”. I am not saying that we should open ourselves up for every people that temporally pass through, but I am calling on you, in your community to be real.

The Apostle Paul wrote “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:2) Burdens are never convenient, they are also dirty, heavy and very inconvenient. But in scripture there is a deep call to move beyond the “fake” where we ignore the burdens that are killing our neighbors because we don’t want to get too involved, to the place of authentic and real community where we let Christ use us to become His hands and feet, where we face the fear of rejection and pain to enter into the community and ministry Christ intended for us, and where we move for “fake” to “real”. I believe that God will give you the courage and the wisdom to make to move, I believe in what you can do through Christ.

You Matter to God you Matter to Us!
Pastor Matt