what is the christian community?
The Christian Community is a fellowship of believers in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area. We offer our church fellowship as an alternative to the Sunday morning services most of us grew up attending. We discovered that it is often more meaningful to meet in a simplified manner than it is to attend a pre-orchestrated worship service where interaction with one another is often minimized.
Sometimes, the necessary demands to facilitate highly-organized and professionally structured church meetings put undue stress on the families involved, especially those in leadership and those who are most committed to the church's success. We feel the congregation is spiritually stronger when leadership and volunteers spend less time in the preparation, organization and administration of these meetings, allowing more time for personal payer and quality time with husband & wife, family and fellow believers..
Our gatherings are designed for those who long to escape the shallowness of a busy Christian life with little time to pray, and desire more meaningful relationships with other believers that go beyond the cursory fellowship of attending meetings and events together.
Our church events are done, mostly, in homes, on selected days or nights throughout the month, with each having a different emphasis. We are committed to regular times of congregational prayer and discipleship of the family toward the biblical roles of a husband and wife , father and mother, as taught in the New Testament. Our meetings are designed to encourage personal involvement and discussion among all attending rather than the straight didactic style of teaching.
Matt Finneran, founder and pastor of The Christian Community, is a graduate of Trinity Divinity School of Deerfield, Illinois. For our meeting times, events and locations, or more information, you may contact us at 919-212-6955 or email finneranmc@aol.com.
When the church begins to take for granted God’s work in a nation by relying more on human effort than repentance and prayer, it risks the very thing it is trying so hard to achieve. Great Christian endeavors will always have their heroes and works of faith, but it is the grace of God that orchestrates it.
To get a better understanding of what we hope
to see the Lord do in our meetings, click here.
The purpose of the our fellowship is to instruct and encourage families to walk in the traditional biblical model that has been so blurred by feminism and the sexual revolution that began in the 1960's. Some churches' response to this movement have often been to ignore the significance of its impact on the believers and avoid the subject in its teachings. Or, worse, the churches will compromise clear biblical standards to appease the movement's criticism of the traditional family so as not to offend those attending their meetings. Unfortunately, we all know that the church is only as strong as its families and the future of the country teeters on the edge of peril when the family unit is destroyed.
We believe that only through Christ can a couple truly restore their original created unity between a husband and a wife. Our fall in the Garden did not just bring enmity between God and man, it also brought division between husband and wife. No longer were Adam and Eve truly “one flesh” in a bliss unity of love and devotion as God intended. They now suffered the consequences of their sin effecting their relationship. Until a couple puts their marriage under the headship of Christ and adheres to His call in serving one another, the curse in Genesis will weave its wave into any marriage and mock the hope “they lived happily ever after.”
It is interesting to note that in the Ephesian 5:22-33 passage dealing with marriage that the Apostle Paul speaks directly to the husband's and wife's individual responsibility to their roles toward one another. He exhorts the wife to respect and submit to the husband and then exhorts the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the Church and lay down his life for her. In other words, Paul doesn't tell the husband to make his wife respect and submit and he doesn't tell the wife to make sure her husband loves her as Christ would. He expects each spouse to faithfully fulfill his or her role in the Christian marriage.
This has two implications that are valuable to our understanding of a Christian marriage. First is that it discourages husband and wife from judging one another and keeping “a record of wrongs.” A husband's interpretation to be subject in everything could be a burden of do's and don'ts that would break the spirit of grace in the wife's desire to please her husband and could create a relationship based on servility instead of servanthood. And the wife's demands to be loved the same as Christ would could put the man in a position of pleasing a list of expectations while never developing a headship maturity to strengthen and lead a woman through the Lord's leading. How better that each one is challenged by the Scriptures and by Christ, out of love, to become the ideal husband and wife, rather than beating each other up by pointing out their flaws and arguing over unkept promises. This encourages each partner to hold themselves accountable while patiently praying the spouse will also grow in fulfilling his or her biblical call.
Secondly, Paul's admonition shows that the church is to specifically encourage and disciple the husband and wife in their marriage roles. It would be a mistake for churches to facilitate programs or ministries that put the couple in positions contradictory to the traditional biblical marriage by supporting egalitarian roles of leadership. Better that the church sets up it's ministries and meetings to foster, nurture and strengthen the marriage relationships so that a husband and wife are encouraged to reflect Christ and the Church in their union. The church meetings should be an extension of the relationships in the home and not in odds with the biblical expectations of how a man and woman work together for the Gospel.
PRAYER FOR THE NATION
"I searched for a man among them who would ...
stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it;
but I found no one." Ezekiel 22:30
I think we all know our country needs a lot prayer if we want to stop the tide of hedonism, humanism, communism, you name it, that is sending our country down that very steep, slippery slope a lot faster than we may have thought was possible. All our political energies and principled stands aren't any match for Satan if we don't take the time to "pull down strongholds" and "wrestle...against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" through vigilant prayer.
But, let's face it, our lifestyles are so busy that we struggle to even get a decent, personal, daily-devotional time with the Lord, let alone add on a group prayer meeting for our nation at the end of the day. And, if, like me, you don't schedule in that prayer time, it probably won't happen. That's why we are inviting you to our prayer meetings held at various times throughout the month at our Farmhouse and other locations in Raleigh Enjoy a scheduled time to pray with other families specifically for our country and the persecuted church worldwide.
If you'd like to be a part of meetings, please e-mail your request to attend or more information