Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? Do you find it easy to make friends or difficult to make friends? Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, community is the one thing we all need. It’s what we were created for. Sometimes in Christianity, community can feel like the thing everybody wants, but few people feel like they have. This week on the Everyday Faith Podcast, we’re so excited to talk to Abby Fabre, one of the pioneers of the Everyday Faith Podcast. Through Bible verses and real-life stories, she explains what it means to pursue community and live connected to others in Christ.
Pursue Community
Pillar #4 of the Everyday Faith Podcast
Belief is the first and primary pillar of everything we do at the Everyday Faith Podcast. Everything starts with belief. Next, you embrace your mission, commit to obedience, and then you pursue community with other Christians who are learning to become more like Jesus every day. This is our recipe for how you can live out your faith!
Our guest this week on the Everyday Faith Podcast is Abby Fabre. If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard her voice interviewing other guests about topics like faith, prayer, loneliness, and healing. Today, Dan and Jess are asking Abby all the questions about how to find community and how to find Christian community.
How it All Started
Before Abby was pursuing Christian community, she met the Lord through the faithfulness of her parents’ pursuit of God and her encounters with the Lord. Abby was raised in a family that loved Jesus, lived in a rural area, and attended a Lutheran church. However, Abby’s parents were the wild ones who would raise their hands and speak in tongues in the middle of the Lutheran service. Their passion for God was always evident to her while growing up. As time went on, Abby’s parents began to recognize that their children weren’t walking closely with the Lord.
Their solution? Find a different church and pursue a new church community. God was faithful to help Abby’s parents find a different Church that provided community, met their needs as a family, and was a safe place to encounter God. Eventually, all of her siblings came to love the Lord!
When Abby was 18, following Jesus and making him the Lord over her life became real. As the years went by, Abby met her husband, Tommy. Shortly after they married, Abby and Tommy found themselves working at different churches, but longing for a church home that felt like home. Just a few years later, Abby and Tommy found their church home, began pursuing community, and saw the Lord fan the flame of their faith.
Looking for a church home? Read our recommendations: How to Find the Church That’s Best For You
What is Community?
Community is generally described as a “feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common interests, attitudes, and goals.” When it comes to pursuing Christian community, you’re searching for a group of people who are all pursuing Jesus together and choosing to do life side-by-side.
Pursuing community requires action and selflessness. A healthy community is where we show up for one another, even when we don’t feel like it. It is iron sharpening iron (Proverbs 27:17). It is learning how to ask good, intentional questions. Community means eating meals together at the dinner table and grabbing coffee together on the weekends. A healthy Christian community requires vulnerability, honesty, forgiveness, and hard conversations. Thankfully, there is a reciprocal nature in community. We don’t just give endlessly, we also receive from one another as well.
Pursuing community takes time. You can’t microwave true community. A healthy and thriving community is built after long-term investments in the people around you. But here’s the best news: it’s so worth it! Even Jesus lived in a community with others. He had meals with them, went fishing with them, went to the temple with them, rebuked them, and received care from them. Jesus, God in the flesh, still chose to pursue community even when it was difficult. As we follow His example, we will find the goodness of God through our connection with others.
Stories of Living in Community
During our interview with Abby, we learned that she has been pursuing community with her church friends for the last few years. At the same time, Abby and her husband Tommy have also been on the adoption journey. When they received a call for an adoption match, the two were overjoyed and filled with hope. As they told their friends the good news, one of the women in their community came over with champagne and cupcakes to celebrate their answer to prayer.
Just 24 hours later, Abby and Tommy received a call that their adoption match had fallen through. The grief was intense, but because of their incredible community, they experienced comfort, prayers, and hope through their friends.
Shortly after this interview was recorded, God did the miraculous. Abby and Tommy received another call from their adoption agency that they had matched again. God answered their prayers! Today, Abby and Tommy are celebrating the arrival of their beautiful, baby girl Alora, and are so happy to finally have her in their family.
Tips for Pursuing Christian Community
1. Serve: Serving at your local church is one of the easiest ways to get plugged in and pursue community. Even if you don’t feel equipped to hold a camera on the media team or aren’t too thrilled by the idea of being a greeter at the front door, Abby encourages all of our readers and listeners to serve. You will learn so much through serving and you will grow in connection with others!
2. Join a community group: Even if it feels odd or awkward, joining a community group at church or joining a Bible study is a great way to meet people and pursue community. Studying the Word with other people deepens your relationship with God and deepens your relationship with others.
3. Stay late after church to meet people around you: This tip for pursuing Christian community is an incredible way to meet people, have fun, and who knows, you may just find your spouse too!
Bible Verses About Community & Christian Fellowship
Bible verses about community and Bible verses about friendship show us that community is woven throughout the Bible. Even in dark times, the scriptures emphasize the importance of fellowship, encouragement, and prayer among believers.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. - Romans 12:15
Did you know there’s a Bible verse about weeping with those who weep? God is so gracious to encourage us to pursue community in a real and honest way. Just like Abby’s story, her friends celebrated with her when it was time to celebrate and they mourned with her when it was time to mourn.
Learn more about community in our blog: How to Live Out Your Christian Faith by Blessing Others
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts - Acts 2:42- 46
This Bible verse about community shows us how the early Church pursued community. They devoted themselves to God, made sure to eat meals together, and made sure to pray together. Acts 2:42-46 even says that they met together every day in the temple courts and ate together with glad and sincere hearts. How awesome to know that God is the God of community and family!
Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. - Hebrews 10:25
Bible verses about community usually encourage us to pray and gather with one another. As we see in this Bible verse about community, the author asks us to not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. Even in Biblical times, it seems that isolation and searching for community was sometimes a struggle. Thankfully, the road map to pursuing community is simple: don’t give up! If you’re wondering how to find community at church, it’s all about being consistent and persistent. Keep praying, keep reaching out, keep meeting together, and keep gathering for dinner.
Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. - Romans 12:10
This Bible verse about community paints a picture of humility, honor, and service towards others. Even when hard conversations come up, it’s our responsibility to be devoted in love and to honor others above ourselves. Selflessness and honor go a long way as you’re finding community.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. - John 15:13
Bible verses about community are almost always tied to Bible verses about love and family. Jesus sets the perfect example of what loving others looks like, even going as far as to lay down his life for his friends and his enemies. Learning to pursue community and love like Jesus takes time, patience, and consistency.
Feeling lonely or struggling with loneliness? Read our post: 13 Bible Verses for When You Feel Alone
Conclusion
It's clear that community is a beautiful and essential part of our faith journey. Through serving, joining connection groups, or simply lingering after church, pursuing community shows us the heart of Jesus and how we can reflect his love to others. Even when it feels challenging, the rewards of pursuing community are lasting and immeasurable. As we finished our interview with Abby, she gave us three tips to remember as you pursue community:
1) True friendship is a blessing and is rooted in love and forgiveness: When conflict comes, we have to choose to forgive and choose to have difficult conversations. Abby’s dad used to say these wise words to her family:
“Do you want a relationship or do you want to be right?”
“Do you want to be married or do you want to be right?”
Forgiveness is a core value of the Christian faith that we can’t ignore. As you’re pursuing Christian community, learning to forgive will become easier with time.
Learn more about forgiveness: Finding Freedom Through Forgiveness
2) Jesus is our greatest friend: The Bible says…
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. - John 3:16
Jesus is our greatest joy and no one can love us as much as He does. As we’re pursuing community, it’s good to remind ourselves that Jesus is priority #1!
3) Why should we pursue community? Everyone should pursue community because Jesus said so. Community is so close to the heart of God. In the Bible, God says through His son: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ - Matthew 22:37-39
As we pursue community, we’re becoming more like Jesus and learning how to love like Him. Wherever you’re at on your journey of pursuing Christian community, we’re praying that God would send the right people at the right time and that you’d experience the joy of family.
Learn more about the pillars of the Everyday Faith Podcast:
