5 Reasons Christians Should Live in Community

Why Christians Should Live Together

If you are one of the many Christians today who want to follow Christ together in daily life, not just on Sunday, you may be responding to Christ’s call to share your life more fully with others. When people decide to follow this path, they discover richer and more meaningful lives – lives that Jesus had in mind for all his people. This original calling was for Christians to be gathered, united in a community that demonstrates the transformative love of God through the sharing of all things in common and taking care of one another and their neighbors. With a desire to become true communities, many Christians have addressed this call by forming communities created to encourage, challenge and strengthen others by a common love of God, and desire to live the kind of life Jesus wants for his people. Others have responded by meeting once a week, sharing a meal and reading Scripture to ignite meaningful group discussion about the kinds of life Jesus wants for his people. Are you ready to take on Jesus’ call for community? Here are six reasons Christians should live in community based on the book “Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People” edited by Charles E. Moore” featuring a collection of contributions from veterans of community living. They know the pathologies of community life and can speak to the impact this experience has had on their lives.

To Form a Counter Culture

The Bible tells us “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2 NIV). Community is an answer to this call, designed to form a counter culture. Contributing writer Howard A. Snyder writes “the church can be free for the kingdom only if it is sufficiently detached and distinct from the world’s culture to maintain obedience for the kingdom.” The church is a kingdom community and in most cultural settings, a faithful church will be a contrast community. While the danger of a countercultural model is that it may lead inward, away from worldly engagement, but when it comes to the total picture of what it means to be the church in a hostile world, it is an important concept.

Enforces Family Values, An Antidote Loneliness

In the book, contributing writer Andy Crouch talks about how Christian community made his years as an unmarried person very rich, so rich that his marriage snuck up on him. He lived for four years in a household with four to six post-college twenty-somethings who ate together, prayed together and entertained friends together. They were guided by a covenant that they reaffirmed each year where they sought to live out Luke’s description of the early church in Acts 2, which is often quoted but little practiced “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” For years, the group shared even a bank account, which soared and dipped dramatically based on career fortunes. In that household, Crouch said he could go for weeks with only a vague awareness of his alones. His life in its mundane and profound aspects was full. “Christian community is a powerful antidote for loneliness,” Crouch said.