6 Requirements for Cultivating Community in a Church

By Rick Warren

“When you look at the list of characteristics, isn’t it obvious why genuine fellowship is so rare?”

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind. … Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Luke 10:27 (NCV)
Cultivating community requires commitment.
If you’re tired of fake fellowship and you would like to cultivate real fellowship and a loving community in your small group, Sunday school class and church, you’ll need to make some tough choices and take some risks.
Cultivating community takes honesty.
Real fellowship depends on frankness. In fact, the tunnel of conflict is the passageway to intimacy in any relationship. Until you care enough to confront and resolve the underlying barriers, you will never grow close to each other.
Cultivating community takes humility.
Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves.
Cultivating community takes courtesy.
The truth is, we all have quirks and annoying traits. But community has nothing to do with compatibility. The basis for our fellowship is our relationship to God: We are family.
Cultivating community takes confidentiality.
Only in the safe environment of warm acceptance and trusted confidentiality will people open up and share their deepest hurts, needs and mistakes.
Confidentiality does not mean keeping silent while your brother or sister sins. It means that what is shared in your group needs to stay in your group, and the group needs to deal with it, not gossip to others about it.
Cultivating community takes frequency.
You must have frequent, regular contact with your group in order to build genuine fellowship. Relationships take time.
When you look at the list of characteristics, isn’t it obvious why genuine fellowship is so rare?
But the benefits of sharing life together far outweigh the costs, and it prepares us for heaven. 

Dr. Rick Warren is passionate about attacking what he calls the five “Global Goliaths” – spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, extreme poverty, pandemic disease, and illiteracy/poor education. His goal is a second Reformation by restoring responsibility in people, credibility in churches, and civility in culture. He is a pastor, global strategist, theologian, and philanthropist. He’s been often named "America's most influential spiritual leader" and “America’s Pastor. More from Rick Warren or visit Rick at http://www.rickwarren.com/