Carrying One Another: What It Really Means to Be the Church

There is a version of church that looks polished from the outside. Everyone smiles at the right moments, the music lands well, and the service ends on time. But beneath that surface, the real work of being a community of believers is something far messier, far more demanding, and far more beautiful than any curated image can capture. The New Testament does not describe a church that merely coexists. It describes a church that actively carries one another.

That vision is worth sitting with for a while.

Honoring Those Who Lead

One of the most countercultural things the apostle Paul asks of believers is to hold their leaders in extraordinarily high regard. Not because leaders are infallible or above accountability, but because the work they do is genuinely costly. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul calls the congregation to esteem their leaders as highly as possible, almost to the point of overextending in love and honor toward them. The reason is straightforward: the labor of shepherding a community of people is relentless, weighty, and often invisible.

The writer of Hebrews reinforces this in chapter 13, verse 17, urging believers to submit to their leaders so that those leaders can do their work with joy rather than with grief. The difference between a leader who is encouraged and one who is worn down is not a small thing. It shapes the entire health of a community.

Consider what pastoral ministry actually involves. There is no true off switch. A church leader is available at three in the morning when a family faces an emergency. They carry the spiritual weight of people in crisis, people in grief, people wandering, and people who are openly resistant to care. Recent studies reflect this reality starkly. Around a quarter of senior pastors in the United States have seriously considered leaving ministry altogether. Half of those who enter full-time ministry do not make it through their first five years. The primary reasons are isolation, conflict, family strain, and the relentless pressure of always being on.

Paul was writing about this reality long before any study could quantify it. The encouragement to esteem leaders is not flattery. It is an acknowledgment that the work is real, the cost is real, and the people doing it need the support of those they serve.

This does not mean leaders are beyond question. Paul himself wrote warnings about those who assume authority for personal gain, for money, power, or fame. A true shepherd feeds the sheep. A wolf eats them. The distinction matters. But for those who are genuinely laboring in service of others, the call is clear: love them, pray for them, and let them know when their work has meant something to you.

The Work That Belongs to Everyone

Beyond the relationship between a congregation and its leaders, Paul turns to something that belongs to every believer. He identifies four specific calls that apply to all members of the body toward one another.

Admonish the unruly. The word often translated as idle carries a richer meaning. It refers to someone who is undisciplined, unstructured, or acting without order. The image in ancient literature is a city without walls, exposed and undefended. Paul’s call is not to condemn but to gently redirect. Think of a senior athlete helping a younger teammate understand what it means to be part of a team. The correction is real, but so is the care behind it. And before addressing disorder in someone else, the honest starting point is always examining one’s own life first.

Encourage the faint-hearted. The Greek word here literally means small-souled, someone whose soul has shrunk within them from grief, fear, or discouragement. The early Thessalonian believers knew this kind of pain. They had lost loved ones, faced public accusation, and wrestled with deep theological fears about those who had died before Christ’s return. The encouragement Paul calls for is both an exhortation and a consolation. It is the voice at mile eight of a ten-mile race saying you are almost there, and it is also the father who comes onto the track to help his injured son cross the finish line. Both are needed. Both are part of what it means to be a community.

Help the weak. This includes the physically sick, the chronically ill, and those who are spiritually depleted. Visiting the sick, praying with them, bringing practical help, and sitting with someone in their suffering are not peripheral acts of kindness. They are central to what it means to be the body of Christ. The early church understood this so deeply that elders would bring the elements of communion to those who could not gather, so that no one would feel cut off from the community they belonged to.

Be patient with them all. This is the thread that holds everything together. None of the above happens overnight. Admonishing, encouraging, and helping all require a long view. One story that illustrates this well involves a young man who was deeply resistant to faith. Over twelve years, patient friendship, quiet prayer, and consistent presence slowly created the conditions for something to take root. One day, years later, he called to say he was reading his Bible and falling in love with Jesus. Twelve years. The harvest is not always visible. But the planting and watering are always worth doing.

Pursuing Good for Everyone

Paul closes this section with a charge to pursue good not only for fellow believers but for everyone. This echoes the word God spoke to the Jewish exiles through Jeremiah, urging them to seek the welfare of the city where they had been sent, because in its welfare they would find their own. The church does not exist in a sealed environment. It exists in the world, for the world, even as it is not of the world.

Refusing to repay evil for evil, turning the other cheek, feeding an enemy who is hungry, these are not passive postures. They are active, deliberate choices to pursue someone else’s good even when everything inside resists it.

This is the church at its most honest and most powerful. Not a polished performance, but a community of people carrying one another toward the One who first carried them.