The Need for Community

I spent lots of time Monday night and Tuesday morning, September 29 and 30, watching the cable news channels tell us that partisan disagreements kept Congress from being able to pass legislation that would prevent the collapse of the American economy. They couldn’t agree on whether the plan was to be a “rescue” of the economy or a “bail out” of “fat cat” CEOs who got us into this mess. The President looked and sounded absolutely defeated when he gave his 8:45 A.M. speech on Tuesday.

This is a crisis. There are ominous signs. Some banks are having to sell out to larger banks. Mine, Wachovia, has been bought. Some businesses in our area (Heard Chevrolet for example) are closing. Jobs are being lost. Our daughter-in-law, an experienced elementary school teacher, applied for a teaching job in Ft. Myers, and learned that more than 300 people has applied for the same job. A wealthy eccentric who lives in Port Orange told me that he had taken his money out of banks and put it in a vault. First Baptist Church of DeLand, where I used to serve as pastor, opens the church office on Monday mornings at 8:30 to people who ask for help with bills such as utilities and rent. In the last few weeks, people have begun to line up at 1:30 A.M. to be first in line when the church office opens.

The message I keep hearing is this: The Church is called to be on the front lines in the difficult days ahead. In hard times, people look for community. When we are faced with challenges to our financial security, and we see others suffering for lack of basic necessities, our better instincts tell us to come together and rely on each other for moral support. Without a sense of community, we go off into competitive individualism and start fighting over scarce resources.

I believe God is saying to New Hope Baptist Church, “Be a strong family of faith. Look out for one another’s interests, not just for your own. As things get more difficult, people are going to need you to be their community. They are going to need to find hope to make it through hard times and come out on the other side.”

We at New Hope can work together to serve each other and the strugglers that come to us looking for a place to belong. They need us to accept, love and teach them. In times like these we all need the knowledge that we are loved and that we belong to a family that is healthy and strong. That is what I hear the Spirit saying to our church.