We have the joy of witnessing members of our church family declaring their faith in Jesus and committing their lives to him as they are baptised at our 11:30am service this Sunday. As a church community, we share the responsibility of supporting them on this journey and helping them remain faithful to the promises they will make.
We talk about “community” a lot at St Andrew’s, but what exactly does that mean?
Since we recently started a new series in the book of Isaiah, I thought it’d be good to let the Bible dictate that discourse and look at what it has to say about the person of Jesus. It makes sense to look at Jesus first when thinking about Christian community, since he’s what makes it all possible – being the biggest thing we have in common which unites us together as a diverse group of people.
One of Jesus’ defining characteristics is that he is a “servant”. We see this when Jesus washes his disciples’ feet (John 13) and explains to Peter that it is impossible to have a relationship with Jesus unless we are willing to humble ourselves to be served by him and receive the gift he has to offer. Of course, this does not refer to literal “feet washing” for us today. However, we know that the same truth applies to us in the sense that we need to receive his gift of salvation, as we cannot possibly earn it for ourselves in our sinful state.
It’s always exciting to welcome more people into our community
As followers of Jesus, we not only accept his service, but we are also called to follow his example and be servants ourselves as we follow his example. That includes serving our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in our church family.
What might that look like to mutually serve one another? It’s being willing to swallow your pride and receive help from others when needed.
It’s humbly letting your friends rebuke you in areas of your life where you need to be lovingly challenged, and being teachable in those moments.
It’s being willing to give (even sacrificially at times) your time, energy, emotional capacity, etc. when you see needs around you and are able to serve both practically and also by speaking the truth in love to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s about asking for forgiveness when we get it wrong, and extending grace to others when they get things wrong too.
Communities consist of people. People are messy. It will take love and patience to bear with one another at times, but there are also countless precious moments of joy as we run this Christian race together. It’s only in the Lord’s strength that any of this is possible so we give thanks for the gospel.
It’s always exciting to welcome more people into our community, and as a church we fervently pray that those getting baptised this week can be brothers and sisters that we are able to serve, and also be served by, as a church family in Christ.
