Paul, you have written and taught all over the place that as Christians, our walk with God is designed to be a community project.

You say that we're supposed to live in an intentionally intrusive, Christ-centered, grace-driven, redemptive community.

Ali responds, that's great, but it's hard to find that type of community, which has been a somewhat common reaction to your teaching.

So should we expect to find this community in every church, or are we supposed to be the ones who facilitate it and cultivate it?

And if the latter, how do we do that?

I think this is a really important question. It really gets back to the nature of the church. I want to talk

about that first. God has established his church and the regular gathering and community

of church for three important reasons. One, I constantly need solid gospel instruction because I can become a gospel amnesiac and because I

always need to deepen my understanding of the Word of God and the truths of the gospel.

So the first purpose of the church is instruction.

The second purpose is for worship, that we gather for a time of formal, external, intentional, corporate worship.

It's very important that as we're singing the truths of the gospel,

we realize that we're also singing those into the ears of the people that are next to us,

that corporate worship is a very significant part of our remembering who we are and what we've been given in Christ.

The third reason for the church is fellowship.

Most of what we call fellowship isn't.

You know, those casual, meaningless conversations about sports, weather, recipes, and politics.

Fellowship really is a calling to be part of the sanctification of the person next to me.

It's that calling to intentionally intrusive, mutual ministry relationships.

We need to remember that Ephesians 4 says that we grow into maturity

in Christ as each part of the body does its part. And so that that mutual ministry of the gospel

to one another, to people that we meet with, we've gotten to know,

...