Creating Community - What’s The Point?

As part of our church’s effort to reach out and be present in our neighborhood, a few of us started a new running club. We put up Facebook posts and flyers to generate interest. Then, on a warm Thursday evening in late May, we were thrilled when 12 people showed up for our first group run. Since then, the club has met twice a week and brought together a couple dozen folks around this common interest. 

As the club has grown, we’ve noticed it has become more than just a group of people who run together. After we run, we take time for fellowship, building friendships, and supporting one another through the ups and downs of life. We have even discussed taking a trip to a half marathon and doing a community service project. 

In many ways, we are like a church, only without the prayers, the worship services, and the Bible studies. But we are a caring community.

Which has generated an interesting conversation in my church. Since there is no explicit faith dimension to this new club, some are hesitant to call it a ministry. Certainly, we are filling a need in this new suburban development, and it is possible that relationships built through this club could lead to new members for our church. 

But are we fulfilling our mission as a church if the social structure we create isn’t Christ-centered? 

Traditionally, Christian mission has been divided into two categories - what we might call the Matthew 25 and the Matthew 28 objectives: to care for the least of these, and to Baptize all nations in the name of Christ. 

A running club, or another type of community that a church could start, doesn’t fit either category. But perhaps in our post-Christian, individualistic, and consumeristic culture - we need to make cultivating community a third objective for the church. And not necessarily Christian community, but simply structures where neighbors can be in healthy, human, caring relationship with one another.

What an act of selfless Christ-like witness this can be! Instead of reaching out for the sake of building ourselves up, the church can reach out for the sake of building up its neighborhood. Isn't that what the Kingdom of God is truly about?