Continuing with quotes from Craig Van Gelder’s The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit:
Defining salvation in individual terms is biblical, but it is not all that the Bible teaches. The Spirit of God is creating a new community as the body of Christ. While salvation is always individual in its effect, how it is to be offered and experienced is very corporate. To be converted to Christ is to be converted to his body, the church. The church is not a collection of self-selecting individuals who assemble to have their needs met. The church, as the creation of the Spirit, corporately offers salvation to individuals, but this salvation is accepted and experienced within a community. (131)
read my paper on “Salvation Found only in Community (the Church)”. I talk about this as well. there is a hint of individual ‘selection’ but over all found in community of the Church. Got some nice little resources on it if your interested any