An Opportunity for Community
by Heather Klein
Find your people.
Squad goals.
Know your tribe.
Friends make the world beautiful.
These are only some of the statements we use to talk about community in our current culture. Add a hashtag and a picture of you and your buddies at a trendy restaurant and you’ve got Instagram gold. Naturally, these same statements find their way into how we think about our communities within a church context.
It’s natural, but is it right?
Here at Journey Community Church, community is literally our middle name. We want people to find their people and feel belonging in a tribe complete with fantastic squad goals. But that shouldn’t be our ultimate goal for community. At our Discover Night events, we offer multiple small groups, classes, and bible studies for people to find those of their similar age, gender, interest, and even stage in life.
However, that’s not the point.
Jesus is always the point.
We must be discipled within our community. The church provides a means for us to build relationships that help us draw closer to Jesus.
They help us make the decisions Jesus is calling us into. They help us think how Jesus would want us to think. Ultimately, they help us make Jesus the Lord of our life.
An evening with a good IPA, an overpriced burger, and lots of laughter with people you’ve met through your small group or class is just a bonus, it cannot be the focus. If we make friend-finding and not Jesus-finding the reason we join a community, then we can easily be disappointed in what we find.
It is often that person outside of our tribe, who would never end up in our squad goal games that can bring the most truth to our lives. When we join groups to join with others seeking Jesus, suddenly people outside of our normal “friend zone” become those with most to teach us…the most to give us. They become the people we look back upon as those who God used to dramatically change our lives toward His good and perfect will.
So as we prepare to go into our next Discover Night on October 22nd, my prayer is that people will come, not with the hope of finding Jesus following friends, but with the hope that they will find friends who will help them follow Jesus.
Heather Klein is the Connection Director at Journey Community Church, an alumni of University of Alabama #wherelegendsaremade, currently a student of Bethel University, she’s has be married for 14 years and a mom of three! 💙💜💙
