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building community


One of the biggest things we do at our church is create community as we interact with people every day, not just during worship.  I walk out of the building we use, and I continue to ask God to fill me with big vision and His dreams.  And it happens again.  More pieces.  More stuff to honor God with.

I hate saying no.  I love saying yes.  This is in regards to helping me.  These are tough, tough times.  Job lose is a daily issue.  Needs on top of needs is a daily issue.  Know what else is a daily issue?  God is still God and still offering His best and real hope to any who will accept it.

"The person who loves the people around them creates community everywhere they go." --- D Bonhoeffer

By creating community around the marching orders of demonstrating the love of God to our community we are a living and breathing testimony of Jesus.  That's my calling.  That's what I believe I am to lead other people to do.  We are touching lives one at a time for a cause much bigger and far outside of what we can do on our own.  Offering hope creates community.

Have you noticed that when the people of God get together to accomplish a great task that the effort and the overflow often leads to more and more people learning about God?  It is like a bomb going off and seeing the results, what is left behind.  We have a saying that we began with at The Community Fellowship ... we are to get the attention of the people around us and while we have their attention, tell them about Jesus.  That is huge.  And that creates real and living community.  Lets off hope in Jesus' name and see if that is the outcome.

1 Timothy 4:10 nlt
This is why we work hard and continue to struggle, for our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people and particularly of all believers.

Ephesians 2:12 nlt
In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope.

Matthew 12:21 nlt
And his name will be the hope of all the world."

Offering hope creates community as we share the love of God with those we meet.

NOTE: this post was originally shared in February of 2009
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