The first Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42). Faith was never meant to be lived alone.
These ten stories about church and community, retold in our own words, show both what the church can be at its best and how easily it can fail the people who walk through its doors. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or group discussion.
Stories in this collection:
- The Lonely Ember: A Sermon Without Words
- "I Won't Be Back": A Visitor's Letter
- "What Organisation Is That?"
- "A Rabble of Pilgrims": What's Wrong With the Church?
- The Roseto Effect: A Town Where Community Seemed to Protect the Heart
- Keeper of Secrets: Every Young Person Matters
- Good Corn: Why the Farmer Shared His Seed
- The Storm of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart
- "When He Laughed": A Girl's Poem About Our Shared Humanity
- Lessons From Geese: Why We Fly Better Together
The Lonely Ember: A Sermon Without Words
A traditional story; its source is unknown.
A man who had always attended church regularly suddenly stopped coming. After a few weeks, his pastor decided to visit him.
It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting in front of a blazing fire. Guessing why his pastor had come, the man welcomed him, showed him to a big armchair near the fireplace and waited.
The pastor made himself comfortable, but said nothing. In the heavy silence, he sat watching the flames dance around the burning logs.
After some minutes, the pastor picked up the fire tongs, carefully lifted out one brightly burning ember and placed it on its own at the side of the hearth. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. His host watched in quiet fascination.
As the lone ember sat apart from the others, its flame began to fade. There was a brief glow, and then its fire was gone. Soon it was cold and dead.
Not a word had been spoken since they first greeted each other.
Just before he got up to leave, the pastor picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Almost at once it began to glow again, warmed by the light and heat of the burning coals around it.
As the pastor reached the door, his host said, Thank you so much for your visit, and especially for the fiery sermon. I'll be back in church next Sunday.
Takeaway: "Let us not give up meeting together" (Hebrews 10:25). Faith that is cut off from others slowly cools; together we keep each other burning.
Source: Traditional story; author unknown.
"I Won't Be Back": A Visitor's Letter
An anonymous letter that has circulated widely in churches. Its author is unknown.
A high school girl wrote a letter to a friend who had invited her to church. In it she described what happened when she accepted the invitation.
She had gone to the service the day before, she wrote. Her friend had invited her, but was not there. She looked for her, hoping to sit together, but in the end she sat alone.
As a stranger, she had wanted to sit near the back, but the back rows were all full of regulars. So an usher led her to the front. She felt as though she was on parade.
During the hymns she was surprised to notice that some of the church members were not singing at all. Between their sighs and yawns, they just stared into space. Three young people she had looked up to at school whispered to one another throughout the service, and another girl kept giggling. She had not expected that in her friend's church.
The sermon was very interesting, she wrote, though some members of the choir did not seem to think so. They looked bored and restless, and one kept smiling at someone in the congregation. Several people left during the sermon and came back again. She thought it was rude. She could hear the constant shuffling of feet and doors opening and closing.
The pastor spoke about the reality of faith, and his message got through to her. She made up her mind to talk to someone about it after the service.
But after the final blessing, there was chaos. She said good morning to one couple, but they barely responded. She looked for some young people to talk to about the sermon, but they were all huddled in a corner talking about the latest band.
Her parents did not go to church, she explained. She had gone on her own, hoping to find somewhere she could truly worship and feel some love. She was sorry, she wrote, but she had not found it in her friend's church. She would not be going back.
Takeaway: Every visitor is someone God has brought to our door. Welcome is not a programme; it is every member's ministry.
Source: Anonymous letter; author unknown.
"What Organisation Is That?"
A humorous piece that has circulated widely online; its author is unknown.
At the weekly meetings of a local Rotary club, a different member was asked each time to say a few words about his job. When it was the turn of a Christian minister, he stood up and said something like this.
I work for a global enterprise, he said. We have branches in nearly every country in the world. We have representatives in almost every parliament and boardroom on earth. We specialise in motivation and changing behaviour.
We run hospitals, feeding programmes, pregnancy support centres, universities, publishing houses and care homes. We look after our clients from birth to death.
We deal in life insurance and fire insurance. We perform spiritual heart transplants. Our founder owns all the property on earth, plus a range of galaxies and constellations. He knows everything and is present everywhere. Our product is free for the asking, because there isn't enough money in the world to buy it.
Our chief executive was born in a small, unimportant town and worked as a carpenter. He never owned a home. He was misunderstood by his family and hated by his enemies. He walked on water, was condemned to death without a fair trial, and rose from the dead. And I talk with him every day.
The church, for all its faults, is the most remarkable organisation in the world.
Takeaway: For all its faults, the church is the most remarkable community on earth, because of the one who leads it.
Source: Anonymous; circulated online.
"A Rabble of Pilgrims": What's Wrong With the Church?
The Australian novelist Morris West wrote Eminence (1998), the story of Luca Rossini, a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church who serves in the Vatican.
Rossini lives in the shadow of a terrible experience from his years as a young priest in Argentina. In the 1970s, during the brutal rule of the military junta, he was tortured in front of the villagers he served. He was lucky to escape alive and was smuggled out of the country. The scars on his back are an outward sign of the scars he carries inside. He has had to live not only with his own suffering, but also with a sense of betrayal at the silence of many church leaders during Argentina's so-called dirty war.
By the time we meet him in the novel, Rossini is fifty years old and a trusted adviser to a rigidly conservative pope.
At one point he is interviewed by a journalist. They sit facing each other, and she goes straight to the point. Let's start with the big questions, she says. What's wrong with the church?
Rossini's reply is simple and wise. It is the same thing that has been wrong with it for two thousand years, he says: people. The men, women and children who make up the family of believers.
The church, he explains, is not a community of the pure and perfect. It is full of the good, the bad and the indifferent; people who are ambitious, greedy, fearful and driven by desire. It is, in his words, "a rabble of pilgrims held together by faith and hope", along with the hard work of learning to love.
It is an honest picture of the people of God. The church has never been a gathering of the flawless. It is a company of travellers on the way, held together not by their own goodness but by grace.
Takeaway: If we wait for a perfect church, we will never belong to one. The church is a hospital for sinners, held together by grace.
Source: Morris West, Eminence (HarperCollins, 1998).
The Roseto Effect: A Town Where Community Seemed to Protect the Heart
In 1961, so the story goes, a local doctor was sharing a beer with Stewart Wolf, a physician from the University of Oklahoma who was spending the summer nearby. The doctor mentioned something that puzzled him. In the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, he said, he rarely saw heart attacks in residents under sixty-five.
Roseto was a small town of around 1,600 people, almost all of them descended from Italian immigrants who had come from the same village in Italy. It was a close-knit place, where many households included three generations.
Wolf's team set out to find out why heart disease was so much less common there than in neighbouring towns such as Bangor.
Was it diet? No. The Rosetans ate a rich diet, often cooking with lard. Was it genes? It did not seem so, because relatives from the same region of Italy living elsewhere in America did not share the advantage. Was it healthy habits? No. Many Rosetans smoked, few took much exercise, and obesity was common. Was it the local environment? The neighbouring towns shared the same water, doctors and hospitals.
In the end, the researchers concluded that the secret lay in the town's way of life. Roseto was unusually close-knit. Extended families lived together, neighbours looked out for one another, people stopped to talk in the street, and community life centred on the church and local clubs. Wealth was not flaunted, and older people were respected and cared for. One of the researchers is often quoted as saying that, when it came to preventing heart disease, morale might matter more than jogging or avoiding butter.
The researchers also made a prediction. As younger generations became more individualistic and the old community ties weakened, they expected the town's advantage to disappear. A fifty-year study published in 1992 found that Roseto's rate of heart disease had indeed risen to match that of its neighbours as its traditional community life faded.
Some scientists still debate the explanation, but the Roseto effect remains a famous example of how much community may matter to our health.
Takeaway: God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). We were made for community, and isolation costs more than we realise.
Source: B. Egolf et al., "The Roseto Effect: A 50-Year Comparison of Mortality Rates", American Journal of Public Health (1992).
Keeper of Secrets: Every Young Person Matters
At an international seminar held in Australia, the Aboriginal educator Eddie Kneebone spoke about the sense of worth his people were able to give their children when they still lived in the traditional way on their land.
Feelings of insignificance and despair, all too common among young people today, were much less likely then, he said, because of a special custom.
At a certain age, a young person would be solemnly entrusted with a secret piece of knowledge that could prove vital to the group's survival. It might be the location of a hidden waterhole somewhere in their territory. It might be the healing power of a particular plant.
No one else in the group would be told that piece of knowledge. And when the time came, that young person would be expected to share it for the good of all.
Imagine, Kneebone said, the sense of importance and belonging that custom gave young people. Each of them had a unique place. Each had a vital role to play.
He pointed out that his people understood the importance of self-esteem and a sense of personal worth long before modern psychologists began to write about them.
The church is meant to be that kind of community, where every member, young and old, is entrusted with something the whole body needs.
Takeaway: In the body of Christ, every member has a part to play (1 Corinthians 12). Healthy communities make sure everyone, especially the young, knows they are needed.
Source: Reported in Catherine Hammond, Stories to Hold an Audience.
Good Corn: Why the Farmer Shared His Seed
A story told in James Bender's book on public speaking, and retold many times since.
There was once a farmer who grew award-winning corn. Every year he entered it in the state fair, and every year it won a prize.
One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and discovered something surprising about how he grew it. The farmer shared his best seed corn with his neighbours.
How can you afford to share your best seed with your neighbours, the reporter asked, when they are entering their corn in competition with yours every year?
Why, said the farmer, don't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and carries it from field to field. If my neighbours grow poor corn, cross-pollination will gradually lower the quality of mine. If I want to grow good corn, I have to help my neighbours grow good corn.
The lesson applies far beyond farming. Our lives are bound up with the lives of those around us. If we want to flourish, we need to help our neighbours flourish too.
Takeaway: Our wellbeing is bound up with our neighbours'. Communities flourish when people share their best rather than hoard it.
Source: James F. Bender, How to Talk Well (McGraw-Hill).
The Storm of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart
The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is one of the world's great ocean races. But in 1998 it was struck by disaster when a ferocious storm hit the fleet in Bass Strait. Six sailors died, and most of the boats were forced to retire.
One of the yachts competing was the forty-three-foot Sword of Orion. During the storm she was tossed about like a cork on the ocean, battling enormous seas. Then the crew heard a roar, and a huge breaking wave hit the yacht side-on and rolled her over.
When she came upright again, the damage was terrible. Crew member Glyn Charles, an Olympic sailor, had been swept overboard and was lost. The mast had been smashed and the rigging was wrecked, and the boat was taking on water.
The crew sent out a mayday call and did everything they could to keep her afloat. They braced the damaged hull, bailed out water and waited for help through a long and frightening night.
At first light, one of the crew saw something he could hardly believe. Another yacht, the Margaret Rintoul II, was close by. He rushed below for the flares and fired one, then another, then more. There was no response. With sinking hearts, the crew watched the other yacht sail away.
The skipper of Margaret Rintoul II later said he faced an agonising decision. One of the first rules of the sea is that you go to the aid of a vessel in distress. But his own yacht was barely surviving the storm. Her engine was not working, making it very hard to manoeuvre, and turning to help would have meant putting her side-on to the giant waves, at serious risk of being rolled herself. Weighing the danger to his own crew, he sailed on. A race protest committee examined his decision and cleared him in 2001.
Meanwhile, the Sword of Orion crew held on. They were eventually spotted from the air, and rescue helicopters arrived. One by one, crew members were winched up out of the raging sea. The rescue had to be carried out in stages, and some of the crew had to wait longer in the battered yacht before they too were lifted to safety. Soon afterwards the yacht was abandoned and sank.
The Sword of Orion crew were among dozens of sailors plucked from the sea during the storm in one of the largest search and rescue operations in Australia's peacetime history. Helicopter crews, aircraft and naval vessels worked for days in appalling conditions. Several yachts were lost, and only a minority of the fleet that set out from Sydney reached Hobart. The disaster led to major changes in safety rules for ocean racing.
When we are in crisis, often the only thing we can do is hold on and wait for help. Sometimes, like the crew of the Margaret Rintoul II, we are so overwhelmed by our own storms that we cannot help others. That is exactly why we need community. In a healthy church, there will always be someone strong enough to reach those who are struggling.
Takeaway: In a crisis we may be unable to save ourselves, and sometimes those nearby are too overwhelmed to help. That is why we need a community of people who will come for us when we cannot reach the shore.
Source: Rob Mundle, Fatal Storm (1999); report of the race protest committee, 2001.
"When He Laughed": A Girl's Poem About Our Shared Humanity
This short poem is usually said to have been written and read by a sixteen-year-old girl at a world gathering for children in 1997. We have not been able to confirm its author or the event, so we describe it in our own words.
The poem is only a few lines long, and it describes a meeting between the writer and a boy from a very different background.
He prayed, she says, but not in the way she prayed. He ate food that was not like hers. He spoke a language she did not speak, and he wore clothes that were not like her clothes. When he took her hand, his skin was a different colour from her own.
Line by line, the poem lists the things that seemed to divide them: religion, food, language, clothing and colour.
Then it turns. When he laughed, she writes, he laughed just as she did. And when he cried, he cried just as she did.
The poem's power lies in its simplicity. Beneath all the differences that keep people apart, we share the same joys and the same sorrows. Every person we meet has been made in the image of God, and every person laughs and weeps as we do.
The church, at its best, is a place where people of every background discover that. Paul wrote that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, but all are one.
Takeaway: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). Christian community begins when we recognise our shared humanity.
Source: Anonymous poem, widely circulated; author and occasion unconfirmed.
Lessons From Geese: Why We Fly Better Together
This reflection has been widely shared since the 1970s and is often attributed to the educator Milton Olson. Some of its claims about geese are simplified, as we note below.
When you see geese flying in a V formation, you might wonder why they fly that way.
As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately behind it. By flying in formation, the reflection says, the whole flock gains at least seventy-one per cent more flying range than if each bird flew alone. That figure comes from a 1970 study that calculated the theoretical benefit for a large flock; researchers since then have confirmed that birds flying in a V save energy, though the exact amount varies.
The lesson: people who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going more quickly and easily, because they travel on the strength of one another.
When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone, and it quickly moves back into line to benefit from the lift of the bird in front. If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay alongside those who are heading the same way we are.
When the lead goose gets tired, it drops back into the formation and another goose takes the lead. It makes sense to take turns at the hardest jobs, whether we are people or geese flying south.
The geese at the back honk to encourage those at the front to keep up their speed. We might ask ourselves what kind of messages we give when we honk from behind: are they words of encouragement, or criticism?
And finally, the reflection says, when a goose becomes sick or wounded and falls out of formation, two other geese drop out with it and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it is able to fly again or until it dies, and only then do they set off again, either catching up with their own flock or joining another.
Whether or not geese always behave quite like that, the picture is a powerful one. If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.
Takeaway: "Two are better than one… If either of them falls down, one can help the other up" (Ecclesiastes 4:9–12). The church is meant to be a flock that flies together.
Source: "Lessons from Geese", attributed to Milton Olson (1970s); widely circulated.
Final thoughts
A cooling ember, an unwelcomed visitor, a minister's job description, a rabble of pilgrims, a healthy town, a keeper of secrets, a generous farmer, a yacht in a storm, a girl's poem and a flock of geese. Each one shows why God places us in community.
For further reading, Sopranu has a guide to the best Christian books of all time, and a summary of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.
Who in your church needs to be drawn back to the fire?
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.