(This is guest blog by Brian Bill, board member of Keep Believing Ministries, and pastor of Pontiac Bible Church )

According to a recent study, there is a plague of loneliness sweeping our country today. This outbreak of isolation has infected our closest relationships. The number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters has doubled, to nearly 25 percent. Another 25 percent are just one person away from nobody and the number of close friends for the average American has gone down from three to two.

Perhaps our technology has contributed to this problem. We’d rather “IM” than say, “I am in need of a friend.” Our iPod’s allow us to be with people and yet be far away as our minds are filled with music. We send text messages and then when we run into people we have nothing new to say. As one person points out: “In the virtual neighborhood, how many have substituted email for intimacy, contacts for confidants and Facebook for face-to-face?” While these technological tools can help us feel interconnected with a lot of people, many of us feel more isolated than ever.

Hidden in the data from this study is actually some good news. We may have fewer intimate relationships but the ones we do have are deeper than what people experienced just twenty years ago. While friction still reigns in some families, many husbands and wives are experiencing closer community with each other, and parents and children are even getting along.

One way to expand your network of relationships is by getting involved in a local church. If you are not committed to a community of faith, may I encourage you to get up this Sunday and go to church? That alone won’t make you feel more connected, but it’s a start because the local church is indeed the hope of the world. Bill Hybels writes: “There is nothing like the local church when it’s working right. Its beauty is indescribable. Its power is breathtaking. Its potential is unlimited. It comforts the grieving and heals the broken in the context of community…It provides resources for those in need and opens its arms to the forgotten, the downtrodden, and the disillusioned…”

A couple years ago I preached a series of sermons on the “one another” statements of Scripture . I learned that it is impossible to live out these imperatives unless we are in close community with other people. We’re called to care for one another, to be devoted to one another, to honor one another, to be compassionate to one another, to agree with one another, to forgive one another, to live in harmony with one another, to offer hospitality to one another, to be united with one another, to love one another, to accept one another, to carry each other’s burdens, to greet one another, to serve one another, to encourage one another, and even to bear with one another.