In Doug Pagitt’s book, Church Re-Imagined, he says, "In many ways, becoming Christian is much like learning our native language; we pick it up when we are immersed in it. I would guess that nearly all of us spoke and communicated long before we started our formal education. What we then learned in school was not the beginning of language use, but the refining of it. In educational settings, the theory of language acquisition through immersion is by far the most successful means of learning. So it is with Christian faith. Rather than seeing Christianity as belief we acquire in a completed form, we ought to enter into it with the understanding that we are at the beginning of a life-long process of discovery and change. Ours is faith that is lived, from beginning to end."
Our Christian walk is a journey that is not completed with our commitment to Jesus Christ, but just begun. We begin a process of transformation through which we grow in our relationship with God and each other. We endeavor to become more Christ-like so that we can more fully reveal the Gospel message to others.
Within a community of other believers is where this change most fruitfully takes place. The community is where we learn more about God and others’ experience of God. The community is where we learn personal sin and how to find healing from it. The community is where we discover who we are as created beings in the image of God. The community is where we see God most fully at work in revealing truth, love and all else that is good. The community is our home.