Living the Good News: Built as a Community
This week on the PC(USA) Church Growth Facebook page, there was a link to a Substack post on church growth books. The substack author listed 25 books about church growth – with the one he’s recently published first – and asked for recommendations to grow the list to 50. He also admitted that after the first 10, most of the books he hadn’t read. Here’s the thing, there is no shortage of books on church growth.
Here are some quick statistics from Pew Research Center that help explain why:
11% of adults in the United States identify as mainline Protestant – that’s about 1 in 10 people will tell you that they are Presbyterian or Methodist or Episcopal, not that they necessarily are a member of a particular congregation. In Tennessee, the percentage is a little better at 12%.
Between 2014 and 2024, the number of adults in Tennessee who attended any kind of religious service at least once a week dropped from 51% to 36%, and the number who seldom or never attended worship increased from 24% to 41%.
Meanwhile, according to the CDC in 2022, 33% of adults in Tennessee self-reported that they always or usually felt lonely. The Surgeon General’s report on the crisis of connection makes the case that loneliness matters because it impacts our health; those who are lonely have higher rates of heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, and dementia. Why? We were formed to be in relationship. The Surgeon General’s report asserts that “Social connection is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival. Now, even in modern times, we human beings are biologically wired for social connection. ….Despite current advancements that now allow us to live without engaging with others (e.g., food delivery, automation, remote entertainment), our biological need to connect remains.”
I Peter was written in Rome, after the Great Fire of Rome, which Nero blamed on the Christian community resulting in widespread persecution, to be distributed throughout the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Christians by the late 1st Century were no longer a sect of Judaism similar to the Pharisees or Sadducees, the followers of Jesus were no longer all Jewish, in fact, most of the Christians in Asia Minor were Gentile.
So I Peter is clarifying the relationship between the Temple and the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus and his followers, and he is encouraging the believers to find their strength in community.
Jesus, he writes, is the cornerstone. The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of worship, the home of God on earth, built on a rock. Now, the center of worship, the home of God on earth, is built on Jesus, the cornerstone. There’s a word play happening here in Hebrew. Son, in Hebrew is ben. And stone is eben. The center of worship, the home of God on earth used to be built on the stone, eben. Now, it is built on the Son, ben, a spiritual house, the community of believers.
All of the church growth books try to offer guidance in how to organize your community so that it will attract more members. I would argue that we would do well to read and follow the words of I Peter.
Have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply. To love deeply, you have to know one another, to share your stories, to know about each other’s struggles and joys. Church isn’t about attendance – coming and sitting on a pew for an hour on Sunday morning. It is about getting together for lunch or supper, checking on each other, helping each other; it’s about leaning on each other and holding each other up…like stones in a wall.
Make Jesus the cornerstone of your life. Realize that everything is temporary except the living and enduring word of God. Nothing else really matters. Not what you study in college, graduates. Not your job. Not your house. Not your hobby. Not your anything. Following the Word of God, living the way of Jesus, is all that really matters in life. Your task on earth – from your first breath until your last – your purpose is to praise God and live in such a way that others praise God because of you.
Be aware that there are stumbling blocks, temptations that will tear down the spiritual house. I Peter says, rid yourselves of malice, all desire to cause pain. Over and over again in Scripture God says that in God’s kingdom there will be no pain. Rid yourselves of all lies, deception, cheating, and jealousy.
A church that is not loving won’t grow. A church that doesn’t serve others won’t grow. A church that has members who are bitter or mean or dishonest won’t grow. In his commentary on this passage in I Peter, Fred Craddock warns, “getting rid of pain-inducing speech and behavior is always in every church an urgent business. But even persons who love each other cause pain by inattention, thoughtlessness, and ignorance. Therefore, the survival of the church always has depended and will continue to depend on a constant climate of forgiveness, spoken and unspoken.”
A church that is loving will grow. A church that serves others will grow. A church that has members who love and serve, who offer grace and forgiveness, will grow. It’s not a strategy. It’s a community. It is offering what people need – to be known and loved – to belong.
Each of us is a stone, and together we are being built into a spiritual house, with Christ as the cornerstone. Let us each strive to for the stone of our lives to offer strength and support to the walls.