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Connect With God: Community

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Don’t go alone. Spiritual growth is a team sport.

Community is a spiritual practice?

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably never even thought of community as a spiritual practice. How does hanging out with other people grow your relationship with God? Well, Jesus left his followers with one command:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34–35

We express our love for and gratitude to God by loving other people. It’s a way of acknowledging that all people are created in God’s image and he values each and every one of us.

So, living in authentic community with other believers is a core spiritual practice because our relationships with others is where our faith meets the real world. Authentic community is where others help us to grow as we help them. It’s where we can experience:

  • Accountability
    It often takes someone else pointing out the gap between where we are and where we could be in order for us to catch a vision for our possible futures. 

  • Belonging
    When people feel a sense of belonging in community, it motivates them toward progress—not because they feel judged, but because they know the group has their best interests at heart. 

  • Care
    When life goes sideways we have an opportunity to grow in our trust of God, but only if we have a support system of people who can shift our perspectives and  help to meet our emotional, spiritual, and even physical needs.

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