We spoke a lot about the need for vulnerability and authenticity during our Soul Care Weekend. But those concepts haven’t always been welcomed in church. I remember a few years ago, an older pastor saying that all this stuff about authenticity was a passing fad and didn’t have a real root in Christian faith.

The more I have thought about that remark, the more I have reacted against that remark. I think it is fundamentally wrong and unhelpful because I believe that authenticity and vulnerability are assumed in the New Testament. I believe we cannot experience Christian community as described in the New Testament without authenticity and vulnerability.

There are over 100 “ONE ANOTHERS” in the New Testament, they described how we are to relate to one another, and how God cares for us through other believers. It struck me reflecting on many of them that we cannot experience them without being will to be authentic and vulnerable with people we trust

• WE CAN’T …. Build up one another (Romans 14:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:11) UNLESS WE ARE VULNERABLE ENOUGH TO ADMIT WE ARE BROKEN IN SOME AREAS OF OUR LIFE

• WE CAN’T … Care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25) … UNLESS WE ARE AUTHENTIC AND ADMIT THE AREAS WHERE WE NEED CARED FOR

• WE CAN’T …. Serve one another (Galatians 5:13) …. UNLESS WE ARE AUTHENTIC ABOUT OUR NEEDS

• WE CAN’T …. Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2) …. UNLESS WE ARE VULNERABLE ENOUGH TO REVEAL WE HAVE BURDENS AND WHAT THEY ARE

• WE CAN’T … Comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18)  …. UNLESS WE ARE VULNERABLE ENOUGH TO REVEAL WE ARE IN PAIN

• WE CAN’T … Encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11) …. UNLESS WE ARE AUTHENTIC ABOUT BEING DISCOURAGED

• WE CAN’T …. Pray for one another (James 5:16) …. UNLESS WE ARE AUTHENTIC ABOUT WHAT WE NEED PRAYER FOR

• WE CAN’T … Confess your faults to one another (James 5:16) …. UNLESS WE ARE WILLING TO VULNERABLE AND REVEAL OUR FAULTS AND FAILINGS

I hope you can see that a lack of appropriate authenticity and vulnerability effectively cuts us off from one of the primary ways God works in our lives, through Christian community.