Just heard a sermon about needing church community. Christian community is good and we're blessed if we have a good church to attend. However, what about those that have no access to a physical church or those that even if they do it's hard to find community? In some countries it is due to persecution and in some places it may be due to poverty or location. Perhaps there is no close local Biblical church. Some places may just have false churches around or ones that are mixed with errors. Within the church, it's often hard to find community for many. I was just talking to someone about this recently and we have often found deeper Christian fellowship with each other across the world than even within our respective local churches. God put us together and we're online church friends and sisters in Christ. Neither of our churches is bad and yes we both serve with our churches. We're both introverted and often just don't have a lot in common with other church members. And most people already have their friends and are busy so it's not personal that even if we do find a connection, we don't always see each other outside of church to "do life" together and such. Which again, I have also found outside the church with other believers. It'd be great to find inside the church, but when you're not young enough for Kairos and not old enough for Prime Timers then there doesn't seem to be much offered to connect young adults and build deeper lasting relationships. Outside of small groups. Which thankfully I've been blessed to get connected with young groups when those are also hard to find. Nothing wrong with mixed ages either, there's so much to learn from each other and I've enjoyed that in the classes. I also did connect with a retired lady and with a type of mentor friend at church through classes and serving, though we don't see each other often anymore. But yes, not being extroverted shouldn't be an excuse but I believe it makes it harder to find those connections. So the sermon was good, I just feel like it was overlooking all the people that would like to find deeper church community and have not. Even Sara from Blimey Cow on YouTube said she found it hard to find community at her church and she's super sweet. I often feel I'm in that boat of being around it but not in it if that makes sense. Personally, that's probably due to a lot of reasons I can think of, but I can only work on the reasons I can control and not the ones out of my hands. We're all works in progress and God's not done working on us. So even if it's hard and at times it feels like it's easier to give up, I can keep trying and so can others. And it's not bad to find community outside the local church as well since we are all part of the body of believers and even Paul traveled to many places and communities with people he missed. Which also brings up missionaries and traveling evangelists, whose church communities may also look different than a typical church community would. And even if a person has not found church community we as believers are united in the Spirit and will one day be glorifying God together forever. Even if the world rejects us, we will always have Jesus.
