Our words face relentless attacks, constantly being raided and twisted to mean something radically different from their true definitions. “Community” is one of those words.
It has been muddled with socialistic terms like “village,” “collectivism,” and “collective ownership” by those with a clear agenda to steal our individual liberties, destroy our families, and usurp parents’ God-given authority over their own children.
We all remember Hillary Clinton’s book, “It Takes a Village…,” where she suggested that a child’s upbringing was ultimately the responsibility of the community. Still, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry recently pushed the limits even further in an ad where she described children as the “property of the collective,” declaring that “we have to break through the private idea that kids belong to their parents” and insisting that “children belong to whole communities.”
Men need to speak up and take the initiative to protect real community and realign it biblically within the body of Christ. Our postmodern society will continue to vacillate on the definition of community because it is not anchored in Truth. Still, the church has a responsibility to draw a line in the sand and let the world know that biblical community is defined by God, not by a capricious culture.
So what is biblical community? It’s believers coming together regularly in one accord—loving one another, honoring one another, praying together, working together, breaking bread together, worshiping together, and reading God’s Word together. It’s spurring one another on toward love and good deeds, bearing one another’s burdens, and caring for one another. It’s fathers encouraging fathers, mothers helping mothers, and the church cheering on the family, not competing against it. It’s Koinonia fellowship where we look to Christ as our Head and understand that we’re actually “members of one another” (Romans 12:5).
Regardless of how twisted and distorted our society becomes, men of God have a responsibility to stand, defend, and champion community collaboration according to God’s blueprint, not the world’s.