Church | Community | Family
Definition from Mars Hill Church website
The local church is a community of regenerated believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord. In obedience to Scripture they organize under qualified leadership, gather regularly for preaching and worship, observe the biblical sacraments of baptism and communion, are unified by the Spirit, are disciplined for holiness, and scatter to fulfill the great commandment and the great commission as missionaries to the world for God’s glory and their joy.
1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 24-26
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
From the book, Total Church:
“By becoming a Christian, I belong to God and I belong to my brothers and sisters. It is not that I belong to God and then make a decision to join a local church. My being in Christ means being in Christ with those others who are in Christ. This is my identity. This is our identity. To fail to live out our corporate identity in Christ is analogous to the act of adultery: we can be Christian and do it, but it is not what Christians should do. The loyalties of the new community supersede even the loyalties of biology. If the church is the body of Christ, then we should not live as disembodied Christians.”
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New Covenant Fellowship Church | VA EC
We are a small group but what an amazing group of people God has placed together in life. It’s been a little more than a year since we began our meetings and God has been so gracious and faithful to us. Witnessing a near non-existent community of young adults, slowly but surely transforming into a loving, united, and committed group of brothers and sisters, gives us the evidence of God’s grace, which I find undeniable.
A group of college students, young professionals, and a married couple, we sure are an interesting bunch. Different upbringings, different interests, different lifestages but because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ we find our lives intersecting, intertwining. Tim Keller describes the Church as a place where enemies band together around the Gospel. That surely is the case as we find there certainly are differences and friction that are present as individuals who normally wouldn’t hang out with each other cross paths. But Christ proclaims a love that is greater and a love that overcomes and a love that reconciles. We see it happening more and more, all to His credit and all for His glory.
Very grateful.
Photo taken by Seung Moon.
