A Simple Solution to Individualism

The church has become a collection of individuals, due at least in part to the prevailing mind-set of individualism in our culture.  I want to offer what I see as the principal solution to overcoming the devastating effects of individualism on our search to belong. The answer is simple and straightforward: We must have a common purpose. We must once again come together around a set of shared beliefs and values.

Based on his extensive research of the social world of the first-century church, historian Wayne Meeks has said: “One peculiar thing about early Christianity was the way in which the intimate, close-knit life of the local groups was seen to be simultaneously part of a much larger, indeed ultimately worldwide, movement or entity.”[i]  At a basic level, community unites us to a purpose bigger than our own lives as individuals.

 [i] Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1983), 75.