Community

Been reading through The Search To Belong by Joseph R. Myers. It's been a good read so far. I came across this gem of a quote earlier. I wish I had read it before last night's board meeting, as we had quite a discussion on what it means to belong to the church these days.

The quote is a quote from Larry Crabb from the foreword to Randy Frazee's The Connecting Church: Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community. Here it is:

The future of the church depends on whether it develops true community. We can get by for a while on size, skilled communication, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense that we belong to each other, with masks off, the vibrant church of today will become the powerless church of tomorrow. Stale, irrelevant, a place of pretense where sufferers suffer alone, where pressure generates conformity rather than the Spirit creating life - that's where the church is headed unless it focuses on community.