On Sunday, Kirk spoke again in ECHO on the topic of community. He took us through the OT where God deals with His people as a group, and yet in our day we always speak of God being a "personal God", a "personal Savior" and many times don't think of how He is working in a bigger picture, say in the local church amongst a body of believers. The truth is that we are never any less than individuals, but we must think of ourselves as part of something bigger than just ourselves.

The speaker told a story of community gone awry: During his childhood, it became known to the local town that his brother had a problem with drugs. Everyone seemed to know, except his parents who found out when the crowd at the high school basketball game began to heckle his brother, who was on the court as the school's star basketball player. They began to yell "STONER. STONER. STONER." His parents were of course heart broken to find out the news... however, nothing could prepare them for that following Sunday when no one at church approached them and only whispered and rumored about them.

I will be honest with you. It broke my heart to hear this story. That genuine believers would act this way to those who needed the most help. And yet, that probably happens so much in today's churches. I wonder how many people at church are hurting and no one has any idea. What's worse, there are people who we KNOW are hurting yet no one makes an effort to do anything about it. There is a true need for real love even in our churches. We are just too focused on ourselves to do anything about it. How many times have I heard someone say that they wanted to bring something up with a friend but were too afraid that it would be taken the wrong way, or afraid that they didn't want to talk about it? That's so worthless, man. The church isn't going to grow like that.