How Do I Find Community At ROCKHARBOR?

Community.

It’s not an easy word to define, really. There’s a lot of ambiguity. A lot of room for differentiation…nuancing. There are levels within that word: community. Some might say they live in a community. Most people are part of some sort of online community. Some of us are fortunate enough to have a group of friends that we might call our community. But what does it look like? What is community, really? What does that word even mean?

It’s actually made up of two words: common and unity.

“Unity”… now that is a radical word. There’s nothing common about it. When people with different ways of thinking, and different histories, different hurts and different fears begin to find themselves desiring the same things, and laying aside all those differences to hold that one desire in common. That is anything but common.

Community is really an uncommon unity.

Most of us haven’t experienced that, but Jesus talked about it a lot. In fact, in one of the very last prayers of Jesus that we have recorded in scripture he prays that his followers would find unity—unity with God and unity with each other. Paul talks about unity throughout his letters, and particularly in Philippians. In the first chapter he tells the Philippians to “stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel.

For the faith of the gospel. For the gospel.

Do this for the sake of the gospel. Be unified in your spirits. Even though you are many act as if you are just one person, undivided in soul and mind. Paul tells them later to be marked by how different they look compared to the kind of community normally seen. As if sharing the same mind. Sharing the same love. Sharing the same purpose. Each of the people different but working as one. He tells them not to do anything if what they are thinking about doing comes from a place that is self-focused. He says to start believing in the value of others in a way that elevates their comfort, their joy, their hopes and dreams above our own. And he tells them that to look like this is to look like Christ. To live like this is to live the gospel. This is a radical kind of community.

An uncommon unity…It sounds impossible, and it should. Because the unity for which we were designed is impossible—impossible apart from the grace and the Spirit of God himself. Living like this is good news. Living like this is the proof that we’re different somehow, that we’re made to live somehow differently. Life like this is the gospel.

And this kind of life is compelling. These kinds of relationships compel people into the world of the gospel. This kind of community—this uncommon unity—compels others to look curiously into the wonder of the God who makes this kind of impossible…possible.

This is what we are after at ROCKHARBOR…A compelling kind of community for the sake of the gospel. We find it on the weekends at our weekend gatherings, in our connecting events across all campuses, through Life Groups that meet around the county each week, in recovery groups at The Refuge, and through outreach opportunities both locally and globally.

Find Out More.
To find out more about becoming part of this community, the best place to start is at The Starting Line.