Hannah Bloom
KingsWay member Hannah Bloom testifies to the transformative, life-giving blessings of being known and loved by her community group and church family.
I grew up in a Sovereign Grace Church in Maryland. For anyone new to KingsWay, we are also a Sovereign Grace church. That is our church denomination. I left the church I grew up in when my husband, Jonathan, and I moved to Virginia shortly after getting married. This gave me the benefit of a solid doctrinal upbringing, but I unfortunately did not learn the skill of developing new deep relationships with other believers. The friends whom I had when I left that church were the same ones that I’d had as a young teenager. I had neither apparent need or desire to form new, deep relationships and was content with those I had.
The result was moving with my new husband to a new church in a new city in a new state and I was a bit aimless for a while despite claiming KingsWay as our home church. Due to my lack of ties to Kingsway in this season, my spiritual life suffered, and I drifted further and further from the Lord. He was faithful, as He always is, and did not allow this to go on for too very long. Feeling I needed to be more involved in the church and able to stay awake through sermons, as I was working nights at the time, I stepped down from my overnight lead position and transferred to one that had regular hours and Sundays off. I was then able to be here almost every Sunday morning but still had no real ties within the church. This was also the season of my life where my husband and I were struggling to conceive, and I was dealing with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. To put it simply, I was drowning, and I felt like all my help was a couple hundred miles away.
Thankfully our lead pastor Matthew was instrumental in connecting me with another woman in the church. Having similar stories, we made a quick connection, and I began to attend the community group she and her husband led due to its proximity to my work. It was here that I first got a taste of what it truly meant to be a part of a growing community that you weren’t simply born into and had grown up within. Being vulnerable and having to share much of my life story with practical strangers were baby steps of growth for me in practicing biblical community.
The season of Covid quickly followed and then Jonathan and I finally conceived our firstborn. Having made the decision as a couple for me to stay home once Naomi was born, I started looking for a new community group closer to our home. This decision was not due to a rift with my former group but rather location since I would be coming from our home in Powhatan vs a job in Midlothian, and the group met in Henrico. This led me to the Rozier community, which has been one of the greatest blessings I’ve received.
The Lord has been so gracious to foster deep, genuine relationships between myself and the ladies in my community group. He was wise to place me with women who excel in loving others and initiating connections and to use their examples to teach me how one lives well in a community of believers. I have never been so well loved as I have with those ladies. I know when I ask for guidance that they desire to speak in obedience to the Spirit into my life and when I ask for prayer, they are faithful to follow through. I have been served by them, blessed by them, and loved by them. But most importantly I have been challenged by them in my faith. Because we love one another and desire to honor the Lord, they have felt comfortable pointing out sin in my life and encouraging me to walk in certain manners. A great example of this happened rather recently actually. I am an avid reader and tend to veer towards the fantasy romance genre. A beloved sister challenged me on the specifics of what I was reading within my preferred story type and helped me to look deeper into how I could honor the Lord in my reading. I am exceedingly grateful for this and the Lord has drawn me to be more selective and cautious of the things I read.
The Lord has used community group in my life to bring me from a place of spiritual destitution to a thriving walk with Him. He does not desire believers to live as an island. He designed us for rich, biblical fellowship. We need it. I needed it and He was so faithful to walk me through learning how to live in light of these truths. I know He has used those in my community group as well as those in this community of believers to make my life more honoring to Him. If you are not part of a group, or if you're attending a group but aren’t genuinely knit into it, I implore you to lean into the people in your group. It can be so easy to show up to meetings and let everyone else share without letting our genuine struggles and failings show. But that is why we have one another, to grow. The Lord wants to use the people in this church to glorify Himself in you and He also wants to use you in the lives of those in your group as well as this body of believers.
Hannah Bloom