There are oftentimes things we read in the Bible that we don’t fully understand. Francis Chan says one thing that’s hard for many Christians to grasp is that we’re all incomplete without one another. We’re individually a unique part of one body—the church—and something amazing happens when we all come together as one unified group.
“I began studying the ancient church: OK, what happened when Jesus left and how did they celebrate the Lord’s Supper? They devoted themselves to it, but I just started looking and … [Paul] says, when you come together as the church, the ekklesia … there’s something special that happens. A lot of times we don’t think that way. We just go, ‘Ah, do I feel like going to the gathering today?’ You’re thinking about yourself.
“And we’ve created church systems where we try to appeal to individuals. … [In the early church,] there was like a sense of incompleteness; every individual was coming, thinking, OK, this is that one time when I get to be what I was made for, a part of the body. … When we come together, the whole body is put together and Christ shows up as our head. … Too many of us think we’re complete, like ‘I just need my mind, I don’t need the church; I love Jesus, but I hate the church.'”
Chan says that this individualistic mindset is common in America, because it’s part of our culture. Do we get excited to gather together with other believers as those in the early church did? To watch the entire sermon about what it means to be part of God’s universal church, click here.
