What do you picture when you think about your church? As a youngster, I pictured our church building. Our dad designed it just before I was born. It still stands next to the interstate: a tall brick and gray building that we described to people as “the one that looks like Noah’s ark.”

One Sunday morning as we drove across town in our Chevy Astro van, I remember being surprised to hear my mom explain to us kids that church is not the building—it’s the people in the building. Even then, it was some years before I began to understand that those people are not only the church when they gather on Sunday mornings; those people are the church all week long.

For me, this was an earth-moving revelation. Both individually and together as the assembled people of God, we have been called, as the membership vow states, “to seek first the kingdom and His righteousness in all the relationships of life,” especially those within the household of faith, following King Jesus as our model and empowered by the Holy Ghost. This is something that mass media and social media cannot deliver.

With this the case, then, my relationship to my fellow church members is of huge importance. All of my interactions with them take on a weighty significance although, to the outsider, they may seem rather ordinary and mundane.

What are these interactions? When I consider my friendships within the church, there are three areas that make up Christian community.

Conversation

Without regular time together and frequent conversation, it is often impossible to build the trust necessary to rebuke and exhort each other. Over time, conversations within the church can have a significant sanctifying effect. Through conversation we accomplish a couple things at once: we get to know each other and we influence each other.

Every conversation involves speaking and listening, but listening is not my forte. It is embarrassing how many times I have met someone, only to forget their name within seconds. Then there are the many times that my wife, Megan, has to snap me out of my daydreaming while she is trying to talk to me. So when James says, “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1), I can feel his eyes boring into my head all the way from 2000 years ago.

Learn to ask good questions. Do you know where your fellow church members are from? Do you know how they met their spouse? Do you know how they get along with their family, what sort of work they do, or if they enjoy that work? Even more importantly, do you know how—or even if—they have come to faith in Christ? I would say that you should make it a priority to find out from as many people in your congregation as possible how they became followers of Jesus. When you learn a person’s testimony, you learn a lot. Paul urges the church, “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all” (1 Thessalonians 5). If you have not listened enough to know who needs a rebuke and who needs encouragement, how can you speak appropriately?

In addition to listening closely and asking good questions, be attentive to what is unspoken. By watching you can learn a lot about the character of your fellow church members. Take care to notice the usher who arrives early every Sunday and greets even the toddlers by name, the frazzled family that rushes in and rushes out every service, and the white-haired saint who sits in the front row. Strike up a conversation with them all, but pay attention to what you see with your eyes.

There is yet another class of the unspoken, however. These are the hidden things of the heart, the secret sorrows. Many people in the church have sorrows so deep and so personal that they dare not breathe them to another human. As you grow in familiarity with your fellow members, you may notice certain areas that never arise in conversation. Take care to notice the daughter who is rarely mentioned, or that last job change, or the sudden and unexplained arrival from a different church. The gospel answers every sorrow a believer may face, and because of that, we each have the privilege to remind each other of the Good News in the midst of suffering, to comfort each other as we have been comforted by Christ.

If I make it my goal to get to know others in the church, I must likewise be open about my own life. If you happen to be in a church full of clams who go silent anytime meaningful, gospel-oriented con­versation comes up, don’t get exasperated and throw up your hands. Rather, set an example of openness. In chapter 1, James tells us to be “slow to speak,” but by chapter 5 he’s encouraging us to speak up, but in a specific way: “Be ready and willing to confess your sins to others in the church.”

Often I think that we use abstract, theological conversation to shield our lives from view. You and I might be able to put on quite the theological fireworks display, but if that knowledge doesn’t bear fruit in love, repentance, and confession of sin, well—a living dog is better than a dead lion. When I open and share my life with others, including my sins and weaknesses, it is not so that they can get an undiluted dose of “the real me”; rather, it is so that they can get a dose of Christ, with whom I am united and in whom we “live and move and have our being,” as Paul said in Acts 17.

Service

True religion must have hands and feet as well as a mouth (see James 1). In every church there are people who have real, pressing needs requiring muscle, sweat, time, and money. That big family needs help loading their moving truck. Those new parents could use some hot meals. The elderly couple could use some help cleaning out their basement. The fellow who just immigrated from Africa needs help applying for a job. And we haven’t even gotten to the widows and orphans yet!

Paul tells the Galatians to continue doing good (not just saying good), and emphasizes that the church must especially do good for those who are of the household of faith (Gal. 6). Whoever does not provide for his own household, Paul tells Timothy, is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5).

My church and yours have structures and systems in place to ensure that those in the church receive care and provision when they are in need. We have deacon boards, mercy funds, monthly donations, soup kitchens, and food pantries all with these things in mind. When someone in the church needs a helping hand, it is often tempting to pass the buck to the deacons. Resist the urge simply to notify the authorities. Carefully consider how you can help—whether with time, money, food, or sweat—and go do it. In the church we must begin to see ourselves as active participants, especially when it comes to serving and caring for our fellow members. If you do not know who needs help or what sort of help they need, you might start by asking the deacon board how you can help out, or you might just practice some of those active listening skills. Put yourself in the shoes of the folks next to you in worship: if you had cancer or were about to have a baby or couldn’t speak English or didn’t have a car, what sort of help might you appreciate?

Inevitably part of the struggle with this is getting over myself, submitting my desires to the desires of Christ. I like being with people who have similar interests—it is enjoyable, comfortable, and easy. While we often feel that we have a right to a certain level of comfort or security, this sentiment is not biblical. Responding to an eager follower in Matthew 8, Jesus reminds us that our calling is to service, not to comfort: “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Christ disregarded all the comforts of life to welcome the world to His table at the expense of His life. If Christ, who is our teacher and Lord, stripped Himself of dignity and respect to provide for our utmost needs, we should do likewise.

Prayer

The third area of Christian community is prayer. Recently I was able to attend our denomination’s Synod for the first time. Like presbytery meetings, Synod tends to have a packed agenda with many decisions to be made, papers to be read and discussed, and updates received from all different committees. Throughout the course of Synod I was impressed with how much the delegates prayed. Multiple times each day, for extended periods, the delegates prayed. Toward the end of the week, one of the delegates said something that I will never forget: “The work of prayer is the work of Synod.” All the voting and debating and presenting notwithstanding, the work of Synod is prayer.

If this is true of the church on the Synod level, it is definitely true down in the trenches of the congregation. So, while we tend to think that our conversations and service and counseling are the “real” work of the church, in reality, the work of church members is the work of prayer.

Think about why this is. Jesus reigns over all the nations, over the economy, over the hiring and firing in every company around the world, and over your red blood cells. Knowing that wherever a few of us gather He will be with us, it’s pretty stupid that I usually think that my eloquence or my smarts or something in my brain is the most valuable thing I have for serving the church. Jesus Himself is God’s great gift to the church.

My point is really this: our most valuable service to each other in the church is to pray. When we set up chairs in the fellowship hall, fold bulletins, make casseroles, rake leaves, give rides, help with homework, mourn with those who mourn, and rejoice with those who rejoice—when we do these things in the name of Christ, that is incredible service. But our prayers are powerful because Jesus is powerful and active among us.

Perhaps the easiest yet most neglected step toward richer Christ-centered community is to increase the quantity and quality of prayer times with others. After all, prayer is free of charge and you can do it anywhere. You don’t need to iron table linens for prayer, and you don’t need to provide food. In fact, historically, prayer and fasting have gone together well, and both are now often neglected.

We need to be better about making the most of opportunities to pray together—not just giving thanks for a meal before we eat. Prayer helps keep us gospel-focused. If someone shares a recent struggle, praying with them will help prevent me from trying to single-handedly “fix” things, and instead return the focus to God, who can redeem all things. The people in my life don’t want to be “fixed” by me; they need to be reminded of gospel truths about our identity in Christ. Even if you don’t share a deep personal need with me, we can still pray together for our mutual encouragement and growth.

A natural follow-up to praying together is to continue praying for other people on your own. In prayer, just as in conversation, remember to be open and honest about your own struggles. The gospel is about repentance and faith, so there has to be some humility and vulnerability on my part because we are both repentant sinners. Opening up your messy home for visitors might be easy, but opening up your messy heart to visitors during prayer forces a deeper reliance on Christ. It is only when we are depending on the work of Christ that we can be transparent about our own needs.

Praying like this helps reorient our conversations, our service, and, ultimately, our entire life together toward a focus on Christ and away from the recent happenings. As our prayers reorient us collectively to focus upon Christ, we ourselves are bound into tighter unity as His people, the body of Christ.

Author Gabriel Wingfield is a member of Christ (East Providence, R.I.) RPC and a student at the RP Seminary. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Megan, and sons Asa and Benjamin. He and his brother Isaac are writing a guidebook for church members.