What Kind of Community Are We Called to Be?

From preserving an organization to becoming a community of faith, hope, love, and witness

Series: Before We Decide Foundation: F-1.0301 — The Church Is the Body of Christ Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12:12–27

Christ does not merely preserve an organization. Christ forms a people.

Begin Here

Churches learn to measure themselves.

We count attendance, giving, baptisms, membership, volunteers, programs, online participation, building use, and community impact. These measurements can help leaders understand what is happening. Budgets reveal capacity and priorities. Participation patterns can expose growth, exhaustion, or disconnection. Buildings, programs, and organizational systems all deserve responsible attention.

But none of these measurements can answer the deepest question:

What kind of community are we becoming?

A congregation may be financially stable without being hopeful. It may be busy without being faithful. It may describe itself as friendly while leaving strangers largely unknown. It may offer strong programs while avoiding difficult truths. It may attract a crowd without forming a community. It may also be small, financially vulnerable, and uncertain about its future while displaying remarkable faith, hope, love, and witness.

Institutional strength and Christian faithfulness are not enemies. Healthy structures can protect people and support ministry. Yet an organization can survive without becoming the community Christ calls into being. If survival becomes the first measure, the church may preserve its visible form while losing sight of the life that form was meant to serve.

The Foundations give the church a richer way to understand its calling. Because the church is the body of Christ, it is called to become a community of faith, hope, love, and witness.

These are not four attractive values selected for a strategic plan. They describe the shared life Christ gives and the kind of people Christ is forming.

Pause

Faith. Hope. Love. Witness.

Sit in silence with these questions:

Which word names something you have experienced within the church?

Which word names something for which you are longing?

Allow a period of silence before anyone speaks.

Prayer

Jesus Christ, you call us into one body and give gifts for the good of all. Quiet our need to defend or evaluate ourselves too quickly. Help us see our common life truthfully. Show us the community you are already forming, the gifts we have neglected, and the practices that keep us from receiving one another. Make us a people of faith, hope, love, and witness. Amen.

Remember

Read 1 Corinthians 12:12–27 together.

Paul does not describe the church as a collection of self-sufficient individuals who happen to share beliefs or attend the same activities. The church is a body. Its members belong to one another because they belong to Christ. Each receives gifts, each depends upon gifts given to others, and no member can truthfully say to another, “I have no need of you.”

The image unsettles many ordinary assumptions about church life. Organizations often value people according to visibility, productivity, expertise, availability, or financial contribution. A body cannot live that way. Paul gives greater honor to the members commonly treated as weaker and insists that suffering and joy are shared. The health of the body cannot be separated from the well-being of its members.

The Foundations describe this body as four kinds of community.

A community of faith

Faith is more than agreement with Christian ideas. A community of faith entrusts itself to God rather than treating its survival as the highest good. The Foundations describe the church as “entrusting itself to God alone, even at the risk of losing its life.” Faith becomes visible when a church can act with courage because its identity and future rest in God.

A community of hope

Hope is not optimism or confidence that every institution will continue. Christian hope lives from God’s promised new creation. It allows a congregation to grieve honestly without assuming that loss has placed it beyond God’s future. A community of hope expects God to bring life that it cannot manufacture and may not live to see.

A community of love

Love is more than friendliness or the absence of open conflict. It makes forgiveness possible, pursues reconciliation, and works to tear down dividing walls. Love becomes credible when people can tell the truth, remain at the table, repair harm, receive strangers, and treat another person’s flourishing as part of their own.

A community of witness

Witness points beyond the church to the transforming grace of God in Jesus Christ. It is not advertising the congregation or proving its importance. A community bears witness when its words and shared life make the good news visible—within worship, among neighbors, and throughout the places its members live and serve.

Notice

Every congregation already has practices that form its common life. The question is not whether the church is being formed, but what its repeated habits are forming it to become.

A church may say relationships matter while giving nearly all its shared time to reports and tasks. It may say prayer matters while treating prayer as the brief introduction before the real work begins. It may value hospitality while practicing conversation that directs attention toward the church rather than toward the person who has arrived. It may proclaim reconciliation while allowing unresolved injuries to become permanent distance.

The gap is not always hypocrisy. Often it is formation. Repeated practices direct attention, establish expectations, and slowly become culture.

Notice where faith, hope, love, and witness are already embodied. Look for ordinary practices, not only major programs: people who pray for one another, members who remain present through grief, leaders who listen before defending themselves, neighbors who have become partners, conflicts that have been repaired, gifts that have been recognized, and stories that direct attention toward God’s work rather than institutional success.

Then notice honestly where the community’s practices contradict what it hopes to become.

Discern

These questions are not a scorecard or a comparison with another church. Let them open a truthful conversation about the community Christ is forming.

1. If someone experienced our common life without reading our mission statement, what kind of community would they believe we are becoming?

2. Where are faith, hope, love, and witness already visible among us? Which is hardest to recognize?

3. What do our calendars, agendas, budgets, celebrations, and conflicts teach people to believe matters most?

4. Who is treated as essential to the body, and who may receive the quiet message, “We have no need of you”?

5. Where has institutional survival narrowed our hope or made faithful risk seem irresponsible?

6. What is the difference between being friendly and becoming a community of love capable of truth, forgiveness, and repair?

7. Does our witness point beyond us to Christ’s transforming grace, or primarily invite people to support and sustain our institution?

8. What repeated practice is forming us into something other than the community we say we want to become?

Join

Choose one of the four words—faith, hope, love, or witness—that names the growth most needed in this season. Do not attempt to redesign the entire life of the church. Select one small practice the community can repeat for the next month.

A practice of faith might name a decision the church will place before God without demanding a guaranteed outcome. A practice of hope might make room for a story of new life at every leadership meeting. A practice of love might require one sincere question before every rebuttal or create a clear opportunity to repair a strained relationship. A practice of witness might begin with listening to a neighbor or community leader before designing another program.

Name the practice clearly:

To become more fully a community of ____________________, we will practice ____________________ for the next month.

Name when the practice will occur, who will help hold it, and when the group will return to notice its fruit. The purpose is not immediate success. The purpose is to allow a faithful practice to begin shaping the community.

A practice for future meetings

Near the beginning of each meeting, return to one question:

Where did we see faith, hope, love, or witness taking visible form?

Whose gift strengthened the body since we last met?

What are our current practices forming us to become?

Entrust

Name the word you have chosen—faith, hope, love, or witness—and the practice you intend to begin.

Prayer

Christ, Head of the Church, we are your body and we belong to one another. Thank you for every gift you have placed among us, especially the gifts we have overlooked or undervalued. Where fear has narrowed our life, form us in faith. Where loss has diminished our imagination, form us in hope. Where injury and distance remain, form us in love. Where our attention has turned inward, form us in witness. Receive the practice we have chosen. Use it patiently to shape us into a community that reflects your grace within the church and throughout the world. Amen.

Carry This With You

The church is not only something we maintain. It is a people Christ is forming.

Continue the Series

Previous: Conversation Two — This Church Belongs to Christ From anxious ownership to joyful stewardship.

Next: Conversation Four — How Will We Recognize Faithfulness? From institutional measures alone to the marks, practices, and ends of the church.

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