Grace Community: What it is, Its Future, and Your Role in It – Part 2

Grace Community: Its Future

The church, whether called St. Peter’s, the Body of Christ, or Grace Community, by whatever name, is brought into being by Grace. People are redeemed by grace and called into communities of other people redeemed by grace. That case has been well made. But what does the community of grace do? The answer to that should be the future of every community of faith regardless of its name. What we do is our future!

One could easily dive into particulars of what we do (bear witness, forgive, pray for those who persecute us). However, we might be better served by considering the one thing general which binds all other things particular together.

JR Ranch captures it well when it says we are to “invest our life in something that will outlast it.” As Jesus did, we empty ourselves for others, for the Kingdom. “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” That attitude? Emptying. Making ourselves nothing. We live our lives for the welfare of others in the footsteps of him who lived his life for us. That is the future of the church. We communicate grace to those who do not know it and to those who know it but need more of it. Remember grace is life-giving, life-transforming, and life-sustaining. What we have, we give away. It has eternal consequences. We invest our lives in something (Kingdom, people) that will outlast it.

So often we ask what’s in it for me. I have helped people join churches and even helped them find another when what the church I was leading did not meet their needs. But having their needs met, nor my needs being met are what is at issue. Jesus did not grasp that to which he was entitled. Instead he emptied himself.  And without a guarantee of a reasonable return. A church with Jesus at its head lives similarly. We set aside our own needs and say to others, “you go first.”

The church Jesus started is not measured by attendance or financial giving. It is measured by the extent to which its people empty themselves for others, the extent to which its people invest in that which will outlast them, the Kingdom, the Lamb’s Book of Life, those God seeks to redeem. Together we extend grace and for those who accept it we incorporate them into a community animated by grace. That should be the future of any church. That is the future of Grace Community.

In the next installment we will delve deeper. We will examine Grace Community and Your Role in It?