One of the amazing things I’m learning as a church planter is the power of community. Now - before you say “Well duh Sherlock” - let me explain.

Community isn’t powerful because people simply get together. Millions of people gather in groups every day in the world and there’s no change. Simply “connecting” isn’t going to do anything.

No, community is powerful when people understand it as the most (behind only Word And Sacrament) powerful means of grace available to us as Christians. And the degree to which it is powerful is directly tied to the degree to which people get naked in community. You read that right. If you want to receive grace from the community (church) you are in, you are going to have to get naked.

Except naked in this instance has nothing to do with your clothes. It has to do with your sin. It has to do with your ugly mess of a life and how willing you are to expose it to those you are in community with. Adam and Eve, when they sinned in the Garden, sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness and they hid.

And millions of Christians are missing the power of the Gospel available to them in community because they have done the same thing. They have covered up their private areas and gone and hid from other people. And they will live their whole lives in fear, shame, hiding, and depression because they’ll never be able to stand naked and not ashamed before God.

Rather, I’m learning that we have to call people to expose themselves. Who they are. What is wrong. And what reality is for them. Once that happens and we take the fig leaves off and come out from behind the trees and stand before God and everybody as we truly are, we are free to begin receiving grace (love, encouragement, challenges, rebuke, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, empathy, service, etc) from those who are around us in church. The Gospel cannot be displayed in isolation. It’s most powerfully displayed in community.

The most powerful church in the world will be the church where everyone is naked. I bet you never thought you’d ever read that.