The Connecting Church

We as a church staff are reading through a book by Randy Frazee entitled, "The Connecting Church."

Each Tuesday at our weekly meeting we will be discussing the concepts from the book.

Randy Frazee writes about community. True Biblical community. He writes, "Biblical community is the life of Christ on earth today."

Do you long for community, true relationships with your brothers and sister in Christ?

I believe you do. Most of us in the Southland lead busy lives. Busy, busy, busy, with work, family and even some church activities.

Most of us find ourselves finally sitting down around 9:00 P.M., too tired to talk and too exhausted to share. What happens? The television set comes on and after staring at it for a while, we go to bed.

Then the weekend which can also be crammed with activities such as working on the lawn, running our children to their activities and church.

We anticipate moving our church to small group ministry, but here's the deal, you can't have authentic Christian community without small groups but you can have small groups without authentic Christian relationships!

We were created to belong. Not just to believe, but to belong. To grow in Christ. To serve in God's kingdom.

Belong. Grow. Serve.

Here's what I am saying - in the midst of all of the activity, you and I can feel a deep sense of loneliness. George Gallup has written that as many as one-third of Americans admit to frequent periods of loneliness, which is a key factor in the high suicide rate among the elderly."

We were created for community.

Frazee writes, "....People need to be involved in meaningful and constant community or they will continue on indefinitely in a state of intense loneliness."

Between family, work, small group, church, children' sports teams, the children's schools, extended family out of town, and neighbors, there are so many connection that none of them are deep or meaningful.

A stone church attender hears "small group" and thinks, "oh, great, one more thing to do, one more thing to attend."

Frazee writes, "The solution does not lie simply in recommending a more meaningful activity while trying to preserve all the other world snow in motion. If a true and workable solution is to emerge, it must involve a radical restructuring of our lifestyle. At the core of this restructuring is a new operating principle of living...in order to extract a deeper sense of belonging, we must consolidate our worlds into one.....the mission it to simplify our lifestyles in such a way that we concentrate more energy into a circle of relationships that produces a sense of genuine belonging."

What's a key? To simplify. Come to Sunday morning worship. Attend a small group. Participate in a ministry.

More to come....