Sermon Title: The invitation to Community
Scripture: Matthew 4:18-22; ESV, Matthew 8:18-22; ESV, Matthew 9:9-10, Matthew 10:1-4, Matthew 20:20-27

I. The implications
II. The mistaken assumptions we make about community
III. What is community
IV. Reasons we avoid community
1. Individualism.
“Our society suffers from a crisis of connection, a crisis of solidarity. We live in a culture of hyper-individualism. There is always a tension between self and society, between the individual and the group. Over the past sixty years we have swung too far toward the self. The only way out is to rebalance, to build a culture that steers people toward relation, community, and commitment – the things we most deeply yearn for, yet undermine with our hyper-individualistic way of life.” “The Second Mountain” - David Brooks
2. Idealism.
“The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams…. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses at that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. The [person] who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly.”” Life Together - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
3. Intimidation.
In solitude and in community, our real selves are laid bare. There’s nowhere to hide. Who we actually are and aren’t comes out, for better or for worse before God, and before the community of God.

“There can be no vulnerability without risk but there can be no community without vulnerability.” “The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace” - M. Scott Peck

“Community is woven through love-drenched accountability.” “The Second Mountain” - D*avid Brooks***

Additional Notes: