The Holy Spirit and Community
At Pentecost the Spirit who is eternally present to all was poured out in an exceptional indwelling upon the apostles. After Pentecost the Spirit was found constantly to be forming actual living communities of grace and testimony. All those united to Christ by faith are united with the called out community by the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit after the incarnation was not creating a conglomerate of isolated regenerated persons but rather a community, a family of the regenerated, an ordered household, an organic body. Ekklesia is called to be a bonded, caring community, a koinonia, a new social creation of grace, the resurrection of the people of God raised up in the light of God’s own coming, a peculiar people.
God the Spirit is love. This love is working to elicit a new community of trust, forgiveness, and faith active in love. God the Spirit is not imprisoned in the buildings and institutional structures we call the church, but is free to awaken and teach and renew by these appointed means the called out people who assemble in these buildings.
Thomas Oden, from Life in the Spirit (Volume 3 of his Systematic Theology)