In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert T. Putnam, talks about the shifting American landscape and how our definition of community has changed so drastically over the past decades. In Bowling Alone, Putnam makes the comment that Americans traditionally have been communal people, bowling together, going to church together, serving in community clubs together. Yet in recent years, this has all shifted. The individuality of the American experience, enhanced by technology, travel and mobility, has increasingly made us disconnected from each other.
Yet as I meet people in Madison, Wisconsin and other places, I see people longing for friendship, for a sense of connection to other like minded people and given to something bigger than themselves. When Jesus came to earth and lived, his ultimate purpose was not to help people improve their moral behavior so they could have improved relationships and get along better. Ultimately Jesus came and died to connect us to God and to each other in the church. The church is of utmost importance, a place of belonging. A place that is safe, where you are loved for who you are and cared for deeply by other people. Jesus and the New Testament writers talk almost non-stop about the imperative of loving each other in the church. This love is manifested by words which build each other up, words which instruct and encourage. Words which bless. This cultivation of words and actions of love is the glue that connects us together in community, helping us persevere in our journey of a "long obedience in the same direction". When Paul writes about the people of God in the New Testament being "in Christ" (Ephesians 1:3), he was revealing the deep life that is ours in Christ, but also the life that we share together living in the "body of Christ" (Eph 3:6). My prayer is that God will give me a deeper hunger to live in Christ, while also a deeper hunger to connect with those in the church also as an expression of his life.
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