We assemble as the church to be equipped, to be edified. The church is assembling as the very embodiment of the Gospel. It does not assemble primarily for the declaration of the Gospel, but for its embodiment. Teaching explains the Gospel to us. Community embodies the Gospel, and Ministry extends the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the center of everything. He ministers as Prophet, King and Priest, and therefore, correspondingly, our life in Christ should be characterized by the explanation of His Gospel, the embodiment of His Gospel, and the extension of His Gospel….

…The Church is both the Redeemed and the Redemptive community of God. The life of the Church should center around fellowship in word and deed, with God and with one another….

…Life in the NT sense emanates from community. Life springs from relationship. Empowered by the Spirit and expressing itself in love. That’s why Paul says in Galatians 5:6, that the only thing that really counts is faithfulness expressing itself in love.

God is saving not just individuals. He is saving a people, for His name’s sake. He is saving and in so doing He joins you to a community that bears his name. And by your conduct, by your ministry, by your love one to another you bear witness to the fact that he is God, and Jesus Christ is Lord. And so your salvation, biblically, is worked out in the context of covenant relationship. God redeems us in order for us to be redemptive as a community….

…Jesus is already thinking in terms of community. When he teaches us to pray he says, “Our Father”, “give us this day our daily bread”.

If you isolate teaching from community and ministry it’s not a satisfying thing…. Teaching is a vital component, but it’s there to show you how to join yourself one to another in the community of God. And you join yourself in the community of God by actively ministering to one another. And in the doing of that God dwells in the midst of His people.

We’ve got to find a way to foster community. So the community can build up its ministry and bear witness to the God it serves.

God is wanting a people to bear witness to the power of His Spirit. More than just the Word, more than just worship; He is wanting living embodiment of the community. We are the first fruits of the world that is to come. We are to show forth in our community, in our love one to another what the embodiment of the Gospel is all about. And when people come into that environment and see that happening, they fall to their faces and say God really is in your midst.

The Church conquered Rome long before Constantine not because of its teaching or preaching and not because of its worship; it conquered Rome because Rome had never seen a community that so loved one another. And so when they assembled as the Church, they assembled to build up one another, to love one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to exhort one another, and to provoke one another to good deeds; to fellowship one with the other, to love one another, and in so doing God came and dwelled in the midst of His people.

We are the first fruits of the final triumph of God.

Copyright ©2002 by Dwight A. Pryor.
All Rights Reserved.