Our Christian Community - Visalia First Christian Reformed Church

Welcome to Visalia First Christian Reformed Church

Our Christian Community

com·mu·ni·ty: A group of people having a common interest.

The common interest that we have also happens to be our primary interest.

Which is:

To love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind ; and, Love our neighbor as our self. Luke 10:26-28

A quote from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a ‘merely human’ reality. In this it differs absolutely from all other communities. . . . Christian brotherhood is not an ideal that we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

Henri Nouwen writes about "Christian Community" in A Spirituality of Waiting.

The whole meaning of the Christian community lies in offering a space in which we wait for what we have already seen. Christian community is the place where we keep the flame alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us. In this way we can live with courage, trusting that there is a spiritual power in us that allows us to live in this world without being seduced constantly by despair, lostness, and darkness . . . Waiting together, nurturing what has already begun, expecting its fulfillment--that is the meaning of marriage, friendship, community, and the Christian life.

By entering into fellowship with Jesus Christ, who emptied himself and became as we are and humbled himself by accepting death on the cross, we enter into a new relationship with each other. . . . It is not enough to say that a new relationship with Christ leads to a new relationship with each other. Rather, we must say that the mind of Christ is the mind that gathers us together in community; our life in community is the manifestation of the mind of Christ.

From “Compassion” by Henri Nouwen

"The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons, with Himself included in that community as its prime sustainer and most glorious inhabitant."

From an unpublished study guide by Dallas Willard.

Click here for a few more christian community pictures.