It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian

Joining a new church community, I'm getting acquainted with new resources and favorite books that serve as backbones to the community of Grace Vancouver Church. Bolsinger's book It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community Transforms Lives is one such book.

Here is an excerpt from Bolsinger:

"The early church understood and taught that to be baptized as a Christian meant to undergo an 'extraordinary thoroughgoing resocilaization' so that the community of believers would become virtually the primary group for its members supplanting all other loyalties.' Through this relational restructuring of the Spirit, the believer progresses in depth of faith (relationship to God) and in transformation into the likeness of God (understood in relational terms and expressed in relationships with other believers- see 2 Cor. 3:17-18; John 13:14-15). Indeed, as the 'fruit of the Spirit' (Gal 5:22-26) attests, relational maturity is virtually indistinguishable from spiritual maturity, and the spirituality of a community is defined by the quality of the relationships formed" (pp. 75-6).