Honest relationships, genuine connections, and healthy friendships are all hard to come by in our modern age. While we might experience increased connectedness through the internet and social media, most of us lack real friendships with other people. As a result, we default into radical individualism or rugged tribalism, both of which feed our experienced loneliness and isolation.
But the way of Jesus offers us a remedy to our loneliness by way of community.
When Jesus lived on earth, he entered a world of broken people and invited them to live life with him. And the community that he formed with these people wasn’t jeopardized by their drastic differences. Instead, their relationships with each other were strengthened by their commitment to their rabbi. Today, we can experience the same type of life-giving relationships by adopting Jesus’ 4 components of community: Proximity, Vulnerability, Practice, and Mission.