Daily Devotional

Building the Biblical community. Today's episode we focus on where to start building a community centered on reading scripture together. 

 Clay Lassiter

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Well, good morning, City Light Leadership Podcast family. Thank you for listening in this morning. This is the official podcast of Headland Methodist Church, located in Headland, Alabama. If you are looking for a church that will help you grow in the life of the Bible, grow in grace and be a ready to serve. We are the church for you. Today I am starting a new daily devotional podcast. I'm just going to do a couple of minutes every day. And eventually, I think also I'll probably have some tie-ins to some online content. But I wanted to talk about today about what it means to be a biblical community and why the a biblical community matters. First and foremost, uh, hey, thanks for listening. And my name is Clay, and I am the creator of City Lights Leadership. Uh, it is based off of Matthew chapter 5, verse 14, uh, about the you are the light of the world, you are a city on a hill. So that's where we get the term City Lights Leadership. And I originally started this as, you know, my way of just sharing with people about leadership context and concepts. And I'll probably have a couple of those episodes and interviews upcoming because it is another year of general conference. I'm really excited to have new guests on this year, but this year I want to get back to the basics. We're in the season of Lent, and I would just say this I think biblical community matters. And what does it mean to live in a biblical community? I'm trying to help us understand as a church, like what does healthy leadership look like? What does healthy community look like? And even more so, like, what does getting back to the basics uh do? Um because I think yeah, we need to start and and understand and begin to know that many people love Jesus, but they feel spiritually stuck, uh, even those who have been in church for 50 years. Um and the problem is not a lack of belief. The problem really truly is that they're trying to follow Jesus alone. And I would say that we, as the body of Christ, have to wake ourselves up, uh, as our friend JD Walt always says on his podcast, um, which is one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to, is wake up, oh wake up, sleeper, and rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. I mean, wake up. Faith is personal, but it's not meant to be private. And we're not trying to follow Jesus alone. We're not out here trying to be uh living life uh as if we have everything figured out and we're just meant to act confident. And so I want to read from Acts chapter two and verse 42 through 47. So hear the word of the Lord. It says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing their proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, the adding to the temple, uh, attending temple together, and breaking bread in their homes, they received food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. So the word of God for the people of God, thanks be to God. So the things that I see immediately off the bat, just I call it the 50,000-foot view, um, is that they weren't living in isolation. It wasn't about perfection, it wasn't about programs, it wasn't even really about attending church, it was about encouragement, accountability, shared spiritual growth, and and then living into the teachings of Jesus. So we see that this early discipleship movement, the Holy Spirit has just come at Pentecost and uh poured out his spirit, and there's been this major event. Paul preached or Peter, sorry, Paul, Peter preaches to the crowd, through thousands get saved, and then we move into these verses, and immediately we see that they're like, hey, there's this simple truth simple truth sharing life together, community, that Christian life is not meant to live alone. That's it. It's I think when we see the body of Christ come together on Sunday mornings, I wonder if we are creating those spaces, as my wife would always say. Are we creating a place where we want to share life together? Or are we simply going back to our homes? The early church completely completely added to their fellowship day by day by ready, teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer. That's it. The early church grew because people lived their faith together and not on a Sunday morning. So, how do we help break down that barrier? What does a biblical community really look like? A biblical community is people helping each other follow Jesus. That's what a biblical community is. It's people helping each other follow Jesus, not perfection, not programs, not attending church. What it becomes is there is a place for encouragement and doubt. There's a place for accountability and shared spiritual growth, living the teachings of Jesus together. That is what a biblical community actually is. It's not, and I'm gonna go ahead and lean into this this morning. It is not, oh, we bought a building and now we're gonna do church the right way. We're gonna show everybody how to do church. No, it is not those things. It is encouragement, accountability, shared spiritual growth, living the teachings of Jesus together. And by the way, I just want to say this to our audience: accountability is not a dirty word. It's not. We're meant to encourage one another. We're also meant to hold each other accountable. I think that's what sometimes is missing in healthy churches. Community matters. So, why does community matter to today? And the modern reality is this we are in isolation more now than ever. We live these individual, busy lives, and we now have individualized and compartmentalized our spirituality. Spiritual formation accelerates in real community. So if you've been longing to see the body of Christ in your church, I know for our church, we just simplified it. We said, we're gonna start with the basics. Two and a half years ago, I got here, there were 65 people on an average attendance on worship. In fact, in 2023, leading up to Easter, they had one Sunday, one Sunday where there was like 17 people in worship. Okay. And I mean, they didn't do that in the interview, by the way. They didn't mention some of these things. But you know, God doesn't call us uh to the easy things. That's for all the preachers out there. And but the first thing I told them, I said, hey, we're gonna make we're gonna make Sunday mornings amazing. So we're gonna preach the word, we're gonna, we're gonna lean into the word, we're gonna remind people of the word, and we're gonna but we can't live in isolation. We cannot believe we can believe alone, but we grow together. Let me say that again. You believe alone, but you can, but you grow together. And when we believe together, man, great things happen. Great things happen. Isolation, busy lives, individual spirituality. We we're not called to live individual spiritual lives. We're called to live together in community. This early church model shows us that it was very simple. It was about breaking bread together, praying together, loving one another together. That's it. Read scripture. So the simple model for biblical community in your church. Ready? Here it is. Three basic practices for a healthy, small spiritual community. Ready? Read the scriptures together. Read them. You know, I I have nothing against watching videos. Nothing. Nothing against it. But read the scriptures yourself. Read them out loud. Don't let the TV read them for you. Read them out loud. And then, ready? Talk about it honestly. Say, huh? That confuses me. Or, huh? Ask each other the question like, what did you get out of today? What did you get out of it? Then, ready? Pray for each other. That's it. No complicated systems, no checks in the boxes. Just pray for each other. That's it. So the simple spiritual practice for this week, uh, I want to invite you to invite one person in your own life. Maybe that person is just yourself this week, but to read a storage passage together. Read, ask three simple questions. Ready? Three simple questions. What stands out in the passage? What does this teach us about God? And what should we do with it? Those are three simple questions. So I'm gonna give you those two again. What stands out in this passage? What does this teach us about God and what should we do with it? That's it. I want to remind you the early church didn't grow because they had a building. The early church did not grow because they had programs. The early church grew because ordinary people committed their lives to following Jesus together. So my final thought this morning is that real discipleship. Real discipleship starts when we real discipleship happens when scripture moves from the page and into shared life. Hey, I want to pray for us really quick before we go. Lord, I know that sometimes we have overcomplicated things, but you have called us. You have called us into community, to real biblical communities. And real biblical communities are ones who read the scriptures together. They talk about it and they pray for each other. Lord, you didn't call us to believe alone. And so you're calling us, you're calling us to talk, to be together, to grow as the body of Christ. Lord, thank you for this day. Uh we rejoice in you, King Jesus. Amen.