Community Church

"Go where you are sent, stay where you're put, and do what you're asked." Major Ian Thomas

Pastor Alistair Begg was last year preaching in Peru at a Wycliff Bible Translators conference where he heard a gentleman speak who was retiring after spending 56 years in the jungles and mountains of Peru translating the Scriptures for Peruvian tribal peoples. Alistair sought him out to glean what he could from him and it was during this time that this enduring member of God’s kingdom gave him this bit of wisdom that Major Ian Thomas had shared with him many years ago, “Go where you are sent, stay where you’re put, and do what you’re asked.”

I heard this a week ago and have already shared it on numerous occasions with a number of people. It is a truth that needs to resound in the ears of a transient culture that is always looking for more or the next thing that is going to bring more significance to their own personal lives. I would like to use this truth over the next several weeks as it applies to the church in several important areas.

The Lord Jesus Christ speaks to his own as the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and forms them as a particular community. He is the Shepherd who speaks to his sheep and they hear his voice and follow him being kept safe from the enemy. These words come to the Israelites in John 10 and relate to them the relationship of the Father and the Son and the relationship then that they have as his covenant people called into a loving and protected community as his own. And in the midst of these words to Israel he speaks of the Gentiles also saying, “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (Jn.10:16). Here his covenant reach goes beyond Israel to the nations, peoples, and tongues outside of Judah and Galilee and he promises they will hear his voice and come and be one with him. The reach goes out and draws in to make one people as he and the Father are one. His reach is one that forms community. His reach goes out to his treasured possession, a people of his own choosing whom he makes his own royal priesthood and holy nation from Jew and Gentile, slave and free, man and woman, child and adult from all kinds of people. His choosing, his call, his redemption, his keeping is to make for himself one people from many who live in covenant with himself through his triune nature and in community with one another.

The church’s community is a reflection of the nature and character of the Godhead as she learns to live in the reality of redemption toward restoration in relationships of love. The church will manifest that she belongs to the good shepherd when she, as adults and their children, do not lay claim to their own rights, but love one another as we have been and are being loved in Christ Jesus. In community will be a welcoming and unifying love around God’s truth and exercised in the fruits of the Spirit toward one another where we are all being built up and reaching toward the unity and maturity of faith in Christ Jesus.

But where does this occur? This occurs where we are sent and put to do what God asks us to do. If you are presently at RPC God has sent you here and put you here to do what he has asked of you, live in community reflecting his glory in the earth through love. This summer there are a number of ways this kind of community is fostered at RPC. Each Sunday there is Sunday School at 9:00 am. There are classes for children up to 12 years of age and there is one multigenerational class for all others. Following Sunday School is morning worship and evening worship at 10:15 and 5:15. Community is fostered here as we seek to worship God in Spirit and in truth together as his body and not as individuals seeking to be entertained by the music or wowed by a slick communicator. The third Sunday of June, July and August will be a time for us to gather together around a meal following morning worship. After having participated in the bread and wine of communion we will then break bread around the tables together as we seek to love one another in community. Wednesday nights is another time for us to build community this summer. Each Wednesday night you either have the opportunity to join your shepherding group in ministering at Fairhaven Assisted Living Home or in preparing a meal for our Wednesday Night Supper and Bible Study at the church.

All of these are excellent opportunities to participate in the community and the building of community at RPC. I encourage you to go where you are sent, stay where you are put and do what you are asked. If you cave into the culture of individuality where the church is a part of your life to satisfy self and do not participate in the community that you have been sent and put into then the inevitable result will be your own discord, division and disunity with the body at RPC. Therefore you have been sent to RPC and put at RPC and you are being asked by God to live in love in Christ as the community of the triune God at RPC. What a joy to share together as those who are broken in the redemptive and restorative work of grace that takes place through the body of Christ as we love one another. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” (1Jn.4:7).

I would encourage you to spend 20 – 30 minuets this week reading and studying the Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 26 Of the Communion of Saints. This is a tested doctrinal explanation of what it means to live as God’s church toward one another in community. As you read pray that God would cause his church to live by his Spirit in this way and use this to examine your own heart in regard to how you may need to apply this truth to your own life as you live by faith in Christ through his grace.