The world feels increasingly isolated and lonely and, too often, the church hasn’t helped. But the New Testiment challenges us to another way of living--to be agents of community.

ACF Institute 2017: Never Alone

<p>The world feels increasingly isolated and lonely and, too often, the church hasn’t helped. But the New Testiment challenges us to another way of living--to be agents of community.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Thando Amankwah

Agents of Community

Our Father in heaven, we are thankful for all that you have done for us today.

The messages we have heard, the fellowship that we have enjoyed.

And Father, as we are before you this evening, we pray and we ask that you would speak to our hearts.

We pray, dear Lord, that our hearts and minds would be open.

I pray for strength, and I pray for the presence of your spirit in this room, that each of us would hear what you would have us hear today.

And that ultimately, through this message throughout this week, we will be drawn closer and ever closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as we pray this in his name, amen.

So we live in an increasingly lonely and isolating world.

And experts are sounding the alarm on what they expect could be the next sort of big public health issue on par with obesity and maybe substance abuse being loneliness.

In 2014, the National Science Foundation conducted what they call the General Society Survey.

And they actually reported based on that survey that about 1 in 4 Americans reported feeling lonely.

And what that meant was that they had no 1 with whom they could talk to about their personal triumphs or failures.

And if you take out family members from that, it turned out that actually 1 in 2 Americans had nobody outside their family with whom they could talk to about their personal confidences, their triumphs, and their failures.

That would be, That would mean about half of us in this room.

And here's another alarming report from Time Magazine.

A group of researchers from Birkham Young University decided to measure what they called the Contribution of Loneliness to Mortality.

So they were trying to figure out basically how much does loneliness contribute to increasing your risk of dying.

Alarmingly, they found that The subjective feeling of loneliness, of feeling as if you're alone, increases your risk of death by guess how much?

I'm curious to see what your guess will be.

They estimated that 26%, which is still pretty significant if you think about it.

Living alone, however, more than just feeling lonely, The fact of living alone increased your risk of dying by 32%.

You know, so no question about it, we live in a lonely, increasingly lonely and isolating world and I think social media doesn't help, you know, 1 bit.

So Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, I'm curious, how many of you have at least 500 friends on Facebook?

How many of you have 1, 000 plus friends on Facebook?

And then another question of reflection for you.

To say, you know, of All of those many friends that you have on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, or your connections on LinkedIn, among all of those hundreds and hundreds of friends, how many of those are actually friends that you would pick up the phone and call if you needed somebody to give you a ride to the emergency room, or if you needed somebody to drop off food for you, or you needed somebody to just be there as a shoulder to actually lean on and talk to, my guess is much, much fewer than that.

Because the reality is the inflated world of social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all of these connections that we have to people online, they are not enough to take the place of the real sort of one-to-one soul connections that we so desperately need.

It doesn't replace that heart-to-heart connection that I need, that you need with another human being.

So as I was thinking about this, and just the reality of our increasingly sort of isolating, lonely world, began really thinking about the depth of our need, my need, and your need for community.

And began thinking about how desperately we need it, but how hard it is to sort of build and to cultivate community.

I don't know about you guys, but I have been a member of some broken churches and some very broken communities.

You know, and so a church that I have recently been a member of and now that this is being recorded, okay, so I need to, I'm going to de-identify the church, okay, so some church many years ago that I used to be, some church somewhere many years ago that I used to be some church somewhere many years ago that I used to be a member of.

I'm going to de-identify it as much as possible.

The church had say 6 elders you know and 3 of the elders at 1 point in time, instead of planning for church ministry, came forward with this idea of a ministry that they wanted to do on a Sabbath morning that they felt that God had very specifically called them to do.

I don't know how many times you've heard that, the Lord has shown me this is what we shall do.

You know, and so they came forward with that idea.

Half of the other elders, the other 3 elders, were completely opposed to this idea based on their convictions of the Bible and the spirit of prophecy.

And so we had a total complete division in the church.

Now, when this happened, church members themselves of course began to take sides.

And so it got to the point where you would walk into the church and you would find these 3 elders sitting on the far right side of the church, the other 3 on the left side.

It was literally, You would hear people singing hymns and you would walk into the church service and you could feel the tension in the room.

There was backbiting, there was gossiping, there was finger pointing.

At 1 point even the pulpit was used to call somebody out.

And I remember talking to a fellow church member, asking myself, how did we get here?

You know, this is in the kind of world and society we live in, the kind of uncertainty, the kind of loneliness that we're sort of afflicted with, we need our churches to be a haven of hope.

We need these communities of faith where we can exhort each other, encourage each other, build each other up, and be there in very real terms for each other.

And here we were in this church of mine from many, many years ago that I was a part of, where people were just cutting each other down and even using the pulpit to do it at times.

And it took 2 to 3 years for the church to recover and I don't think ever fully recovered from that.

And I say this to say, you know, when I think about my need for community and your need for community, asking myself, where have I seen a community of believers, a community of faith, where they genuinely cared for each other, genuinely being there to exhort, to encourage, to support, to push each other along towards a closer, deeper walk with Christ.

And the only example I could come up with was the early church of Acts chapter 2.

So turn your Bibles with me to Acts chapter 2.

A number of really beautiful facts and sort of examples that come out of reading this passage for us in that when we read and we find in verse 42 that we're told that within this early church and this was after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Peter preaches this mighty sermon.

Thousands are baptized and the early church begins to take shape and we're told in verse 42 that they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship And the fact that that word doctrine appears, they're telling us that their community of faith was grounded very deeply, very solidly in doctrine, in truth, in a deep understanding of the Scriptures and of the risen Christ.

We are told in verse 44, 45, that they had all things in common and that they distributed amongst themselves so that anybody who had need had those needs taken care of.

It's easy for us to sort of look at this and think, this was a different time and a different place, and yes, it was, but what an example of Christ-like selflessness their community actually really was, That they could go back and sell what they had, their possessions, and distribute so that anybody who had need had those needs taken care of.

Beyond that, we are told, they actually were a community.

So continuing daily with 1 accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.

And just noting here that they were with 1 accord in the temple, and so yes, they worshipped together in the temple.

But beyond that, they actually were breaking bread from house to house.

That means they were visiting each other.

They were fellowshipping in each other's homes.

They would share meals and fellowship and talk.

They were genuinely a community of faith.

You know, And I envy and I long for what they had.

In the sense of just having a church community where you actually are growing together in the doctrine and the truth of Christ.

You're actually sharing in prayer, in fellowship, and you're visiting each other, and genuinely not just sharing food, but talking and building these sort of lasting connections and friendships with each other.

And as I was mentioning earlier, having sort of experienced how ugly church can get when human nature and sin sort of comes to the forefront, to then thinking about what is it about Acts chapter 2, what is it about these believers that allow them to experience this kind of community in real time?

What was it about them that allowed them to sort of be able to come together to say, you know, I have more than I need.

I'm going to sell my house, sell my land, and bring the money to the apostles and ask them to share to those who have need.

What makes them come together and say, I've been thinking about brother X and sister Y today.

I'm going to go over, pay them a visit, bring them food, fellowship, pray with them and encourage them in the Lord?

What allowed them to have such an unselfish, Christ-like love for their brethren?

Not sure that I have the complete answer to that question, But I wanted this evening to spend a few minutes just looking at 1 aspect of what I think was part of what allowed them to be that kind of church.

We're gonna stay in the book of Acts back and forth between chapter 2 and a few other chapters this evening.

Acts chapter 9, and I'm going to read in your hearing verse 31, which I think offers a clue as to part of what was it that created this experience for them.

Acts chapter 9 and verse 31, the Bible says, then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee and Samaria had peace and were edified.

You know, if you think about peace and what peace looks like in a church, they had peace and they were edified.

And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were what?

They were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were what?

They were walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

And we could unpack every single aspect of that verse.

The 1 part that I want to unpack tonight is that comfort of the Holy Spirit.

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Agents of Community

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