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session 3: community 1

re-imagining church: community

session three

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session 3: community 2

Where Do You Belong?

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Belonging

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Consumerism

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Price Tag

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Satisfy Me!

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Community

…the sum of relationships a group of individuals has with one another or their common experience of sharing together

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Acts 2 CommunityThey committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles,the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signsdone through the apostles! And all the believers lived in awonderful harmony, holding everything in common. Theysold whatever they owned and pooled their resources sothat each person’s need was met.

They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Templefollowed by meals at home, every meal a celebration,exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in generalliked what they saw. Every day their number grew as Godadded those who were saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

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The Early Church

• not over-organised

• not too centralised

• God’s people getting on with it

• others liked what they saw!

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The Early Church

• personal and intimate belonging

• social and public belonging

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The Church

“The church is to be the primary agent of mission and if it does not exhibit evident community and transformed lives then any amount of evangelistic events and church projects will have limited credibility.Lesslie Newbigin

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Somewhere Else

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Somewhere Else

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Real Community

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Being Real With Each Other

• honesty• effort• reality• peace

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Being Joined Together

• Look at the people around you

• What do they mean to you?

• How real are we with one another?

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Challenge Of Community

• be devoted to one another in brotherly love

• be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you

• encourage one another

• spur one another on towards love and good deeds

• confess sins to each other and pray for each other so healing may come

• bear each other’s burdens

• accept one another• be subject to one

another• serving one another

in love• bear with each other

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Total Attentive Listening

• listening to God• listening to each

other• listening to

those beyond the church

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Building Community

• Sunday Meals• Explore• Prayer Triplets• Dining Out• Coffee Time

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Sharing Community

• Zephaniah Trust

• Food Bank• Inn Churches• Big Sing• Shoeboxes• Haiti

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The Dream

“…a dream… a community vibrant with life, pulsating with forgiveness, loud with celebration, fruitful in mission… aglow with the glory of communityBrian McLaren