Problems are for Solving

The Connecting Church

by Randy Frazee

(Pastor of Pantego Bible Church in Ft. Worth, TX)

If you’re like me, you’ve been missing something in your life. It’s only recently that I realized what this is. Community. Authentic, biblical community. This is a hold in the lives of most of the church in the United States today.

American=Rugged Individual. All of us know this. We don’t have neighborhoods anymore but instead subdivisions. Even the name “subDIVISION” implies the separation we all feel from those we live near. America is called by many experts today including George Gallup, Jr. and George Barna the “loneliest nation on the earth.”? But is this individualism and isolationism that has become an integral part of our culture Biblical? Pastor Frazee says that it isn’t. In fact, he states that if the church is going to bring Jesus to the “me”? generation, it must do so by truly becoming what it was intended to be “the ultimate ‘we’? organization”.

Community is about serving something larger than oneself. As Church members we ought to understand community, but most of the time we don’t. We ought to depend upon one other, and we are called to be there for one other. Frazee wants to exhort the church to be a community once again. Our culture is marked by individualism, isolationism, and consumerism. These three marks of our culture present the three barriers to authentic biblical community.

Pastor Frazee writes, I wrote The Connecting Church in order to share the principles I am learning about authentic biblical community, principles gleaned both from my study of the Bible and from my conversations with other people”? Frazee doesn’t want these principles to be just in a book to be read, but to be lived out. He offers three Biblical solutions to the three barriers to community. To free us from individualism, he encourages the Church to find a shared purpose. This purpose needs to go beyond more people in the pews or even small groups, Frazee argues, to measuring our small groups and our church by the evidence of Spiritual growth that authentic community alone can feed. To free us from isolationism, he encourages us to live in a common place. This means that we have to totally rethink our lifestyle in order to find ourselves living near other members of the same Church. This means buying a neighborhood rather than just a house. Finally, to counter consumerism, Frazee encourages us to think as stewards of shared possessions. We need to think of all that we have as belonging to God so that we can use it for His purposes and the good of His Church.

Frazee’s book is a whole new look at what the Church should be. Despite the fact that Frazee is writing from the perspective of a Willow Creek model megachurch–this book can be immensely helpful in calling the church back to a simple, separate, deliberate community. This may just be the best thing to ever come out of Willow Creek.

Whether you’re in a big church or a small one—the principles in The Connecting Church are ones that the Church has lost in the last few generations and one we need to embrace once again. No matter your background, you will find it refreshing, and hopefully God will use this Biblical teaching to renew our sense of need for community in the modern Church.

You can find The Connecting Church at Amazon.com.

You may also want to check out the Connecting Church Association website.

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