Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

So this is what we're going to talk about the humanity of community. We all need to be in community.

Community helped me so much this week, and so we're really talking about the humanity of just the humans around us.

What should we do with people? What should we do with people?

Oh, people. People.

I told my wife whenever we got married, when we were dating, I was like, you need no two things about me.

And I was dead serious. Both of these things turned out to be completely wrong, but I was adamant about both of them.

I said, number one, I will never work at a church again.

That was almost 18 years ago. And I have always worked for a church since then.

I said, number two, I hate people. I can't stand them. You just need to know that.

If I could do whatever I wanted to do, I would go to the mountains and I would never see people again. I can't stand them.

I don't like people at all. And so that turned out to be very wrong too. Maybe I wasn't even saved. I don't know. Jesus had not done any work in my heart, apparently.

I don't know. I was like, people. I'm done with people. I don't like them.

To me, it felt like whenever people are involved, that's when messiness is involved.

If people are around, then drama and messiness is around. And I couldn't stand that.

And so I was like, I can't stand people. And so this is who we have to deal with.

The reality that we live in is that we are communal people.

We want to be around people. We desire to be around people. We need it.

I don't know if you've ever seen the people that do what I wanted to do, that go off in the mountains and live by themselves.

Watch them interact with people when they come back into town for a little while. It's a little bit weird, all right?

So we need these people. We need everyone around us. We need to be in community.

And so that's what we need. And I was working with the graphics team, the communications team on staff here.

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