Finding Community in Life Together

Mission & Values: Find Hope. Find Community. Find Purpose.

We're continuing our journey through the mission and values of Mt. Olive Commerce, and if you've been following along, you know these aren't just nice-sounding statements we made up. They're an accurate reflection of what God has already been doing in and through this church. These values may not have been fully articulated before but are nonetheless deeply important to who we are.

As a reminder, our mission statement is: We exist to help people find hope in Jesus, find community in faith and life, and find their purpose through God's calling. We can condense this into: Find Hope. Find Community. Find Purpose. So far, we've covered the two "Find Hope" values: We find hope in God's truth and We find hope in God's love.

Today, we're moving into the first of two community values: We Find Community in Life Together. The full statement reads: We invest in authentic relationships across cultures, backgrounds, and all generations with honesty, humility, and mutual support as one people in Christ.

The church is not meant to be a secondary community, but a primary community. And the church is not meant to be culturally or generationally exclusive, but a global community. The early church saw themselves as a multi-generational and multi-cultural family, who leaned on each other for support, doing life together. They knew what it meant to embrace that Jesus unites and tears down all human boundaries.

United Through Jesus

One of the initial contentions in the early church was whether to include Gentiles in the hope that comes through Jesus. Some thought salvation was for Israel alone. But after investigation, Peter and others accepted that salvation was meant for everyone. Paul was even called by Jesus to be the chosen evangelist to the Gentiles.

In Ephesians 2:19-22, Paul reassures a primarily Gentile church that through Christ they are not "foreigners" to the faith. They stand alongside Jews as equal citizens of heaven and as brothers and sisters in the household of God. Jesus made this possible. The church is being built out of all the people in the world, every culture, race, tribe, tongue, gender. It doesn't matter. They are all equal in the eyes of God.

We are recipients of that reality. Most of us have no claim to Jewish culture. We are the very definition of Gentiles and foreigners in the eyes of Jews. Yet here we are, included.

Through Jesus, all believers are united. All believers are equal. All believers are included. We are all family. It doesn't matter what culture a believer comes from, we have this in common: that we were once lost in our sin but through Jesus Christ we are saved.

Historically, the American church has not been very good about this. Even today, in 2026, the American church is the most segregated institution on the planet. We use "culture" as an excuse to segregate our worship, when the Bible is clear in Ephesians that the Gospel transcends culture and generation.

We would not be here today as a church if the Gospel had not been an inclusive Gospel. Even when we don't deserve it, Jesus made the way for us all to be included. And for that reason, through Jesus we are unified no matter where we come from or what we look like.

We have a responsibility to perpetuate that attitude. We have a responsibility to reach out to every tribe and every nation, all who call upon the name of Jesus, and embrace them as brothers and sisters. Anything else is not representing the name of Jesus.

If we are going to find community in life together, then we need to understand the responsibility of being cross-cultural to include ALL believers, no matter where they come from or what they look like.

Doing Life Together

The early church didn't see themselves as a collection of people who came together occasionally, they saw themselves as an integrated community that did life together. They worshipped, learned, and ate together. They depended on each other and took care of each other in times of need. Their community wasn't out there where their homes were or where they worked. Their community was each other.

The modern church wrestles with this idea of community. We see our lives as "out there" and church as something we come to once or twice a week. Our church family is secondary in most cases. Life orbits out there and church is the interruption. But the early church had it the other way around. Church community was primary, not secondary. Life happened with each other.

Modern church membership often communicates business-like voting rights or social club membership perks. But what we see in the early church is that there was no need to formalize the church as a business, because the people came together as a family and a community. And they saw this community for what they could do for others, not for what the community could do for them. Today, the word "member" no longer communicates what it means to join with a Biblically minded church.

The value in a church isn't in financial success or membership benefits, but in the mutual commitment to each other to work together as partners in the Gospel. I want to challenge you to rethink church:

Stop thinking of church in terms of membership and begin thinking of it in terms of partnership in ministry. 

Membership shouldn't come with perks and benefits, it shouldn't be about us or what we get out of it. It should be about publicly committing to partner with the mission and vision of this community of believers. Together, we partner in life, we partner in growth, and we partner in ministry.

Showing Up Sacrificially

The early church recognized the need to carry each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2). For them, community wasn't just about socializing or studying the Word together; living life together also meant showing up for each other in sacrificial ways. Selling things and giving the proceeds to help those who were struggling. Bearing burdens. Helping one another when things were tough.

Culture has taught us to seek benefits for yourself first. We've even been taught that relationships are only valuable so long as they add value to our own lives. But scripture doesn't teach us to think about our relationships with ourselves first, but with others first. There's a certain amount of humility that comes with sacrifice.

It's a fundamental approach change.

We shouldn't go into a relationship with our walls up but with our arms open. We don't ask how they make our lives better, we ask how we can make their lives better.

Imagine a world where everyone approached relationships like that. We're not always going to get that in the secular world, but we absolutely should be approaching our relationships in the church this way. If we all treated each other a little less selfishly and a little more selflessly, we'll begin to act and behave like a biblical community living life together. In fact, we'll truly begin to act like family.

Your Challenge: Commit to Your Church Family

Are you committed to your faith community?

We're supposed to be a community of believers first, that come together through Jesus, living life with one another, and being there for one another sacrificially. The community is here. The community is us. Your church community is meant to be your PRIMARY community and the church to be your place of renewal and preparation to face the outside world with Gospel urgency.

Here's what I want you to consider:

• If you've never committed to your church community: Stop making excuses. Don't get tripped up over the word "membership." You need to commit to being a part of church family and commit to working together in ministry. It's not a club, it's a partnership.

• If you've been mistreating your church family: Make amends. Recommit yourself to being FAMILY to each other, not enemies. The blood of Jesus makes us one. Don't put each other down. Don't belittle, demean, or tear down. Encourage, advocate, and build each other up.

• If you're looking for this kind of family: We'd love for you to be a part of Mt Olive. We're not perfect. Everyone in here will tell you this is a church of broken people. But we're family. And it's all because of Jesus.

  
  

We can be this kind of family and have this kind of community because Jesus died for our sins on a cross and rose again on the third day. Salvation is real because the Gospel is true.

Continue this series with us and discover how We Find Community by Loving Our Neighbors.