Well, how do we not lose our faith when we lose confidence in our local church? Or, how do we not lose our faith when we feel neglected or pushed out of a local church community? This is a really sharp question today from a listener named Sarah in Houston, Texas.

Pastor John, among my friends, I fear I see a form of Christianity that finds its impetus in a person's ability to settle into the social life of a local church. There's a pressing towards maturity as a community ideal, doing the things other believers make a habit of, Bible reading, weekly worship, small group gatherings, etc.

But it all lacks a God-focused center in the individual's life of faith. It's a conformity to community expectations, which is not a bad thing in itself. The problem comes when one of these "believers" feels socially slighted or pushed out. Maybe she feels the pastor is more distant than he was in the past, or her overall friendships have grown colder, and her sense of belonging in a particular church wavers at the relational level.

And then she finds that her faith crumbles to the dust as she turns away from God altogether. How can we guard ourselves and one another, Pastor John, from mistaking a sense of belonging within a community to genuine faith in God? Wow, this is a very astute observation about contemporary Christian experience.

And maybe it went by so fast, Tony, I wonder if people actually heard what Sarah is saying. Let me add a little bit and say it again. A significant emphasis in our missional life, our evangelism, is the offering to people of a new community, a new set of relationships, offering it to alienated and lonely and estranged people.

That's not wrong. And Sarah is observing that it happens and that it isn't wrong. It's not any more wrong than praying for someone's cancer to be healed. And lo and behold, God heals the unbeliever, and they're so amazed that they believe in Jesus. In other words, a miracle can be a pathway into salvation, and community can be a pathway into salvation.

And what Sarah is drawing our attention to, really helpfully, I think, is that authentic pathways into salvation can sometimes replace salvation. Love for being healed can replace love for the healer. And evidence that this has happened might be that a person experiences the return of the cancer and then a crisis of faith and a throwing away of Jesus.

Or a person—and this is what Sarah is describing—may experience a deterioration of the community relationships that had been so sustaining and then throw away Jesus as they throw away the church. And the way Sarah is putting her question to me is, how can we guard ourselves and one another from mistaking a sense of belonging within the community with genuine faith in God?

And I'll try to answer this in just three simple ways. First, let's strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, Ephesians 4:3. In other words, let's do everything we can to keep Christian community real and authentic and sustaining and satisfying and beautiful, both inside and to those outside the church.

Let's labor to keep it from becoming dysfunctional and hurtful and disappointing. And right at the heart of how to do that will be the steadfast effort to make Jesus obviously more precious than the community. In other words, what holds the community together is that Jesus is more important than the community.

And the new believer needs to feel this, be taught this. They may come into the community so deeply in love with the people and the community that they don't realize fully what has happened to them, namely that Jesus has been made their Lord, who is supremely valuable, vastly more valuable than the people in the community.

And just like many other things that have to be taught because new believers don't know them and don't fully experience them, this has to be taught. Jesus is better than the community of Jesus. Jesus will be there when the community of Jesus lets you down. So part of keeping the community real is a focus on Jesus with that supreme value.

Here's number two. While we strive to maintain the beauty of unity in the community, we must continually teach from the Bible, the whole picture, the realistic biblical picture, that community life in the church will be very imperfect. And the Bible is what teaches us to be ready for that and how to deal with it.

I mean, just list off a half a dozen examples. The Bible teaches we're going to have to forgive each other, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. That's Ephesians 4.32. Jesus said 70 times 7. What do you do if somebody comes to you and they say, "I'm sorry," seven times?

He says, "Do it 70 times 7," which means in the church we're going to be hurt. We're going to be offended. Otherwise, there'll be no need for forgiveness. Or forbearance, endurance, Colossians 3.13, forbearing one another, bearing with one another, meaning if forgiveness doesn't solve the problem and you disagree about what is good and what is helpful and somebody keeps annoying the socks off of you, the Bible teaches you what to do with that.

Gut it out. Forbearance, endurance. Read Colossians 3.13. Or the whole teaching of church discipline says you might have to excommunicate somebody. Well, people don't get excommunicated because they've made it nice in the community. They get excommunicated because they've made it miserable in the community, Matthew 18. So teach young believers that there's such a thing as church discipline and make them sober.

Or lots of sin in the community that has to be dealt with because Galatians 6.1 says, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual, restore such a one." So usually those transgressions involve hurting other people. Idleness, faith-heartedness, weakness. 1 Thessalonians 5.14, "Admonish the idle, encourage the faith-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all." 1 Peter 3.9, you're going to be treated badly sometimes because it says, and this is talking to Christians about Christians, not the outside world.

You can read the context. "Do not repay evil for evil." So you get evil in the church. Reviling for reviling. You can get reviled. "On the contrary, bless, for to this you were called." That's what happens. People lose it. And we're called upon to return good for evil. And then Acts 20 warns us about wolves coming into the church.

Yikes! And they're going to be in the eldership of all things. And Demas in 2 Timothy 4.10, "Left the faith and went away from Paul." Lo and behold, good grief, the most admirable leaders of all, Paul and Barnabas, had such a falling out in Acts 15.39, they couldn't even work together anymore.

That must have crushed some new believers. Right? I mean, if you'd been led to Christ by Paul and Barnabas, and you saw those two guys not be able to work it out, you'd say, "What have I signed up for?" I say, teach the Word. Teach these new believers who have been drawn into the new community.

Make the Word so pervasive, so powerful, that they know these things. Teach them the whole counsel of God. Nothing makes a new believer more stable over time than being soaked in a full exposure to the Word of God. And the last thing, number three, the last thing I would say is always keep Christ central and show him and his glory as what satisfies the soul.

Show him, show the new believer who came in because of the sweetness of the community, show him that the community is precious, not as a God or a Savior, but as something that helps us know and enjoy our God and our Savior. Don't neglect the radical teachings of Jesus in this new community who says, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me," Matthew 10:37. And surely we should add, "Whoever loves community in the church more than me is not worthy of me." And make sure they see the radical experience of Paul, Philippians 3, 8, "I count everything as loss, including community, if I have to.

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." So at least those three things would be my answer to Sarah's question about how can we guard ourselves from mistaking a sense of belonging with genuine faith in God. Thank you, Pastor John. That's so good.

Jesus is better than the community of Jesus. There's a lot to think about in this episode, and that was a shrewd question indeed. And Sarah's question today leads me to say something about the general nature of the questions that arrive daily in our inbox. We get a bunch of them.

Thank you for sending them in to us over the years. We really appreciate the tens of thousands of questions, probably over 100,000 questions now that we've gotten in the inbox. There's two types of questions that we commonly get. A lot of them are like -- I would say most of them are like, "Pastor John, I was reading my Bible this morning.

I came across something I don't understand. Can you help me?" But then we get questions like this one that have clearly fermented for weeks and maybe months, and then they get formulated in a way that's not specific to a person but addresses a trend or a phenomenon that's broader and more relevant to our community of listeners.

You can hear the age of the question in the one that Sarah asked today, and you can hear it asked in a principled manner. Those really are the best questions we most look for. So if you have a question that you've been ruminating on for a long time, and you've now come to a place where you can articulate it in a principled form, email it to us today at askpastorjohn@division.org.

Well, the place of our loving sacrifice in relationship to our delight in God is a point of constant discussion when it comes to Christian hedonism. So what glorifies God more, our delight in God or our self-sacrifice to others? It's a great question, and it's one we'll tackle when we return on Friday.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.