What is Community?

For the last 7 years I have been pounded with the word "COMMUNITY." I was introduced to that word as if it is the greatest thing that makes up a college campus, dorm life, and college atmosphere. I had never heard the emphasis on community and building community until college. It was marketed as, "You will never have this type of community living outside of college." Yes it is probably true that I will not live in a dorm with 70 other guys again, and it is possible I will not live within two blocks of 1200 people. Does that mean that I will never live in community again? Does that mean that the close relationships that I have made with those around me will never happen again? 

Well now I am in Seminary, and we talk about our "community" as being unique to us. Well of course it is unique, we are a bunch of students living door to door and walking to class, not having to wonder why we are there, what we are doing, what we believe, if we/they have kids, or even what sports team they like. We know these things. If we need someone to pray for us we can just ask, no reservations. If we see people having a bonfire, we don't have to ask if it is alright to join in, we pull up a chair, grab a beer off the community cooler (the picnic table), even if its not one that we brought, and we hang out. That kind of community is unique. 

Does this mean that when we leave these settings we won't have community? Do we have to redefine community? What is our community? What is my community this summer, when I'm living in a parsonage surrounded by cornfields on all sides? Where is my community then?

I think we need to come up with a different definition of community. As a church, we think of our worshiping community, but what about the community around us? The word "community' makes me think of a retirement community, scrabble club, and communities centered around people the rest of society has cast out; the homosexual community, the AIDs community, the lepers of our modern world. We make these boundaries around other communities, but what is our community? We have the people who we work with, but are they part of our community? Community used to mean the neighborhood you live in, the town, or block.  Is it living close to someone that makes them part of your community? Is it the fact that we share intimate details of our lives to those who are in our community?

I think of how people in our church help out with ministries as a church in the city, but it seems that others in our worshiping community only see it as ministry done by a few. Isn't this a ministry that our church community participates in? How do we transition the idea of ministry as being done by a few, but that ministry is done by our entire community of faith. We are part of something bigger. Do churches focus on the community around them, or do they focus on simply who comes to their church? What if your church is 6 miles from the closest town, where do you claim you community is? How do you reach a "community" when your closest neighbors are the ground squirrels in the back yard? 

As the church we need to redefine what community looks like, and how we create it. Hundreds of thousands of young adults come out of college and are looking for another community to get involved in. Are we creating an atmosphere that invites people into community? 

Again, what is community? I do not have the answers, but I don't believe that we need to pretend we are a college, but just emphasize the values that COMMUNITY has been all about. 

1. People want to feel that they are a part of something
1. Connected with small groups, common goals, gathered around beliefs and values
2. People want to have friends
1. Invited for supper, kids can hang our, people they can relate to
3. Genuinely cared about
1. Need your lawn mowed on vacation, a meal brought over because of a new baby, simply cared for

Those are simple values that the church can build itself around. That is what we all desire and want to some extent. Some want more and some want less, but we all have these need for community. 

The church should be focused on this, but this focus doesn't come as easy as we would think. We come to be comfortable in our community and cling onto it. Even if you were born and raised in a community, there comes a time when we get initiated and brought into it completely. In the church we call it profession of faith. Everyone in a community has something in common. We were all once outside of it. Whether we were a child, and now we are adults, we joined an athletic team, or we joined a new church. We were all once outside, but get brought into something that is already established. 

Let us be a community that redefines what it actually means, let us change the mentality that we won't ever have community again, and let us believe that our faith community is one that welcomes all who God presents to us.