One-Anothering Well

A few years ago we preached a series of sermons on the “One Another” exhortations in the Scripture. The dozens of “one another” exhortations in Scripture speak not only to an essential component of Christian fellowship but also to an essential part of how we fulfill the Great Commission (Jesus’ mandate to “make disciples” of all nations, Matthew 28:18-20).

The early church made disciples by a three-fold process of proclamation (telling the story of Jesus) and edification (cultivating vibrant and attractive community life), which resulted in replication (seeing new people come to faith in Christ and training them what it means to follow Jesus).

How did this work? The church was a unique kind of social body in the first century Roman world. Christian community defied the usual categories. Believers weren’t bound together by race, ethnicity, and class. It was the vibrant community life of those early Christians, the way they treated one another and the way they ministered to the community, that set them apart. That kind of community life created a curiosity for gospel proclamation; when outsiders saw that vibrant community life and heard the Good News about Jesus, disciples were added to the church.

What was true then is still true today.

When we “one another” well, we cultivate the kind of vibrant Christian community that makes the gospel attractive to outsiders. When our conversations and relationships are gospel-centered, when we “forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32), we create an atmosphere that is attractive for outsiders, who long for that kind of community life.

Our culture doesn’t understand the beauty and power of vibrant community life, but it instinctively longs for it. We have something unique and surpassingly wonderful to display to the watching world.

Patterson Park Church is known for great music, great support for missions, great ministry to families, and great preaching and teaching. But we also one-another well.

How do we one-another so well?

Some of the ways are in the organized ministries of the church:

• Our deacons help folks in our fellowship who are in need. Many in our fellowship contribute to the deacon fund, which is used to help our people in need (for instance, to defray the costs of car or appliance repair).
• Our deaconesses write notes of encouragement, provide home-made meals for grieving families after funerals, set up meal trains for our people who need help (as they did for me when I had my knee replaced a few years ago).
• Our “Helping Hands” and “Strong Hands” ministries are for those who assist the deacons and deaconesses: doing yard work or car repair or preparing meals.
• Our men turn out for workdays at Camp Jabez, mending, painting, and repairing.
• Many of our people serve each week in hospitality ministries, children’s ministries, student ministries, tech ministries, music ministry.

But many of the ways we one-another are organic, ways we help one another outside of organized ministries. This layer of one-anothering is almost invisible, but it is vital to the health of our community:

• Our community groups and adult Bible studies rally around group members to provide the help they need.
• We stand around and visit with one another before and after events, deepening our connections with one another.
• Our pastors and elders visit and pray with people before surgery and when they are hospitalized, but we have noticed that many women in our fellowship have also taken it upon themselves – above and beyond the work of the deaconesses – to visit those who are in the hospital or home-bound.
• A group of young married couples meets for fellowship and mutual encouragement twice a week. They initiated and organized themselves a few years ago, and they have continued to meet, adding new couples along the way.
• A group of seniors recently launched their own ministry, the “Amazing Grays” (clever title proposed by our own Judy Moser).  

There are many fellowships where words like this from a pastor would be a mild reproof, but I can write this as a commendation.

Good job, PPC!

You are doing well in the vital work of one-anothering! Keep it up, and, as the writer of Hebrews exhorts us, let us continue to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb 10:25).

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship