All believers!

Can one church do everything? Is in fact The Church more than one single church family Or are we called to fellowship in a single church family?

These questions have been in my mind for a couple of days. I have argued with myself quite convincingly from both sides, and the result is simply more confusion!

The debate stemmed from the exciting start of a young men's house group this week at my home church. The group was started by people from one church (mine), was the vision of a group of people in that church, and has a lot of young men who worship on Sunday at that church. However, there are also young men who are part of the group who worship at other churches nearby. They are all friends: going to college, school or football together; and they all attend youth camps and youth worship events together. For me, this makes sense - this is the only young men's house group in the area, rather than having 3-4 small groups of 3 or 4 young men who all worship at the same church meeting up, isn't it better that we join forces - having a larger group of 10 or so young men, all who come with different church backgrounds, listen to different teaching on Sundays and will support and grow together? But, there have been questioned raised about whether young men from churches outside our own should come along too.

I think that youth work, certainly in our area, is paving the way for how The Church is going to have to be in the future. We have a number of small churches: each church group has around 5 families with young children, about 5-10 young people, about 10 old people, 2-3 people in their 20-30s etc.

There will be a couple of people who have experience of special needs, there will be a few who have experience of divorce, or bereavement, of mental illness. No single church can offer a really effective ministry or outreach in any area on it's own - we simply lack the resources. And yet, there remains a reluctance to accept this. We are all trying to do it all, and are therefore managing to do nothing really but we "should" reach out to young families, to the elderly, to 20-30s, to the youth. Why?

If the church up the road has a really strong youth programme, what is wrong with young people from our church accessing that? If we have a strong programme for young families why don't we encourage other young families in the area to access them. Tit for Tat as it were... Those people in our fellowship who have a heart for the elderly, can be involved in outreach based at the church over the hill, the one right next to the old people's home! 

The Church is larger than one single group of people - In Acts 4, Luke talks of the early church:  "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had." (Acts 4:32, NIV) All believers. Not all believers in Jerusalem. Not all believers in the house on that street, but ALL believers.

I think, personally, we need to learn from those early believers and stop thinking that we have to do everything in one small church - we need to be believers together, sharing everything we have.