Is the church here to help me to grow in Christ as an individual? Or has God put me here to help the church grow both qualitatively and quantitatively?

The easy answer is “Both!” And that’s not completely wrong. But the early Christians clearly prioritized the health and growth of God’s community over the goals and desires of individual believers.

This group-first mentality is not only characterized the early church, it characterized family life throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. This is why families arranged marriages. The goal of marriage in the ancient world was the not relational satisfaction of the individuals involved. It was the honor and ongoing viability of the two families who brokered the marriage. The group — in this case the family — came first.

When I emphasize the strong-group orientation of the early church with my students, they often push back as follows:

Dr. Hellerman, ancient society was strong-group in orientation. Modern America is individualistic. Neither is better. They are simply two different ways of life. In our cultural setting we are not obligated to replicate the collectivist mentality and strong-group solidarity that we encounter among the early Christians. We will be more successful, in fact, if we frame the church and the gospel in a way more appropriate to our individualistic culture.

So goes the argument, at any rate. What follows is an excerpt for my forthcoming book, Why I Need The Church To Be More Like Jesus, which directly addresses this objection:

Strong-Group Christianity As A Trans-Cultural Value

I want to challenge this kind of thinking from several angles. First, any theology of spiritual formation that purports to be biblical must begin with the nature of God as three persons in perfect communion with each other, sharing a single divine essence. Scripture firmly grounds the practice of Christian community (the topic of this book), moreover, in the intimacy shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We find hints of the connection between God as Trinity, on the one hand, and the social nature of human beings, on the other, as early as the first chapter of Genesis. A Christian reading of v. 26 finds an allusion to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the plural pronouns: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our Ա.’ĝ

Could this imply that the image of God in humankind includes a relational component? The verse that follows appe