• One thing Christ came to do was to build His Church. “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18)
• Scripture invites us to be “in Christ.” Being in Christ is something we do together; we are in Christ with everyone who is in Him. We are connected together and, therefore, are part of their lives as they are part of ours. We can only be truly “in Christ” together with one another.
• Christ is the head of the Church. Paul tells us, “… Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior.” (Ephesians 5:23) For us to be in Christ, we are therefore a part of the body, the Church.
• You cannot have Jesus as your brother and His Father as your Father unless you are prepared to have all other Christians–of all types and stripes–as your brothers and sisters. Christians who worship in a different style or tradition are still our brothers and sisters, part of the body of Christ, the Church. Joining the Church does not make you a Christian, but being a Christian does make you a member of the Church and makes all other Christians your brothers and sisters.

• Mobility: It used to be common for one to stay with the same employer most of their working life, to live in one place and for children to go through school with the same classmates. Now, it is common for people to change jobs frequently, move often and have shorter relationships, and those trends follow into church life as well.
• Increased individualism: The trend of individualism makes the basic unit of society the individual, not the community. The idea is to find the job, relationship or church that meets our own requirements and our own needs, rather than thinking in terms of community, whether that’s family, church, city, etc.
• Self-centeredness: In looking at the church, we ask what we will get from it, whether it is meeting our individual needs, rather than asking if we are giving what the church needs. As Paul reminds us, “In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35)

• If we manage to make a solid commitment to our local church, there is still a temptation to have little to do with the wider Church. We may not see the need to go beyond our local church, to be involved in anything beyond the church to which we belong and where we worship. We might even be suspicious of the structures and wider organization. This could be anything from our diocesan structure, to ecumenical involvement.
• Without a connection to the wider Church, we miss connections, enrichment and support structures. Engaging with churches that do things differently is more difficult than dealing with those who do things in the same way we do. Those connections give us the opportunity to deepen our beliefs, strengthen our community and expand our experience of God.

• We receive a place to belong. Communities share their story with all those who belong. Our story becomes interwoven with all Christians in the Church, with the story of Jesus, the Gospel being at the center. We belong to the story and we continue to help build the story. Every week in the Eucharist, we retell the story together, “The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed, took bread…” (1 Corinthians 11:23) This story, which we share, binds us together as the community to which we belong.
• We receive a healing community. The church is a community where we try to welcome people across the normal divides found in society, where those who some exclude find a place where they can heal. The church was made to be a healing community by its very nature. We express that by how we treat one another and by how we pray for one another. In all these ways, we are to mediate to one another the healing of God, but in order for this to happen, there must be a level of commitment to be there for one another. If we avoid committing ourselves fully to a particular church, we will miss this. Being in a committed fellowship is part of the foundation for healing.
• We receive a task. In the Church, we are to hear, proclaim, celebrate and embody the Gospel. In the Church, we gather to hear and celebrate the Gospel in worship as well as in study and prayer. We embody the Gospel as we live out the love and forgiveness of God by being a loving and forgiving community. Moreover, we proclaim the Gospel in order to share that love of Jesus with others. We proclaim the Gospel with our words and our lives.
• We are given the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, communion, we can sum up all other things we receive in the Church. In the Eucharist, we remember our Lord and are affirmed as social beings. We retell the story; we enter into the death of Christ and participate in the body and blood of Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:16) In community, we are accepted as members of Christ’s body.

• How much do you experience the Church as an oasis of community in a relational desert? How much do you think the Church has bought into the individualism of the rest of society?
• What do you think lies behind that individualism?
• How do you find enrichment when connecting with the wider Church? We are to embody the Gospel: how are you doing that, or how might you do that?