you have to love michael w. smith songs. oh, the fond memories of childhood camps. funny thing is, i dont even remember 99% of the people i met at camps…those people i was soooo heartbroken over on the last day as we held hands and sang that song.
i digress.
things are a little busy for me right now, so my blogging might be sporadic in the upcoming weeks. i apologize. speaking at community of hope sunday went great! i love love love speaking. hopefully they did too. and appreciate the prayers you sent my way. once i get my hands on an mp3 and decide it doesn’t suck too badly, i’ll try and post it! if you want to see me in action, complete with britney spears headset (i had to resist singing “hit me baby one more time”) you can see a snapshot here. it was the first time i had ever used a headset and i thank the sound guy for helping me get it on without messing up my hair.
since i am obviously not blogging interesting things right now, you should go check out this post on the lifechurch.tv swerve blog…
bobby asks, “is community broken?”
i wrote about some of my thoughts on this churchy buzz word here and here (for those of you who are new)…but i would love to hear your thoughts on his question…i’m keeping up with the comments, so please dive into the discussion over there!
is community broken? what do you think?
Comments
13 responses to “friends are friends forever”
i think we’re just confused about what real community looks like or even means. i would say it isn’t broken, it just doesn’t exist in the places we try so hard to create it. i believe it’s more of a lack in authenticity that serves as our demise. our interaction with “community” is far more shallow than i believe it was intended.
i’m more curious what we define community as first before making a concrete statement on if it’s broken or not.
Hey Anne.. would this be Community of Hope in Arizona?
Nope, sorry! In Mansfield, TX. :) About an hour or so away from my village in Rockwall – in the Dallas area.
I don’t know about community in general, but my community is broke. Not irreparable, but damaged. 20 years ago we joined a small Mennonite church where people cared that you were there and knew if you needed something. Our love for Jesus showed in our service to each other and those around us. Somewhere we got the notion that we should ditch our “Mennoniteness” and look toward becoming a mega-church. We have grown in numbers but not effectiveness. To me growth that we have now looks like a fourth grade science experiment, where you leave a plant in the dark for awhile. It may grow, but it’s not healthy. As I read different peoples views on the internet I am amazed at how many there are that are having a parallel experience.
I don’t really like the term buzzword, as I infer it to mean that it is a fad. I know at our church community is a priority and it is not broke. If you consider our church your home, you are encouraged weekley to be part of a small group. I am a firm believer as I have seen it happen in my life, that real life change can only happen amongst the community of other believers.
i hope buzzword is a buzzword :-)
Bingo saralee.
I attend a megachurch now. By 2014, they will have a bigger facility in place. I am already planning to move on to a much smaller church or being involved in a church planting somewhere way before then.
Church should tie the community together but those days are long gone.
Instead of trying to fix our past sense of community, we might need to redefine community and rebuild from there.
I’ve never attended a “megachurch” (the church we go to now is smallish: about 400 or so), and every church I’ve been a part of in my life has been between 300 and 500. We live near MANY megachurches and I’ve visited them for various events, etc.
No church is perfect, surely, (I’ve been around the “Christian block”), but a few years ago my husband and I were going through major marital problems. Our church handled it and us with such grace, forgiveness and COMMUNITY. I really never knew what it meant to be in a community until then. They came alongside us, counseled us, prayed for us and protected us.
Again, no church is perfect, but I really think we found a family, a community, at ours.
What a perplexing question Anne!
My initial response was: no, community isn’t broken, we are! But I decided it was worth some more thought than that.
In looking at community, it helps me to tear the words apart…being the seminary student that I am and having had several semesters of Greek, I started there…I am reverting back to English instead!
Community = COMMUNE + UNITY
Commune..when I think about communing I think about being together. I think about two people walking together on a journey through flat lands and narrow passes. It is intimate in that there is both safety and vulnerability. It involves sharing the very deep parts of ourselves, not just the surface formalities. It is journeying together towards something.
Unity…implies togetherness as well. It is about being one..in purpose, spirit, goal, ambition, everything. It is a place where individual desires are laid down for the good of the entire group. There is give and take in unity because in order to be one, no one can be THE one. It requires humility.
So…COMMUNITY is journeying together as one for the good of everyone.
Is community broken?
I don’t think so. I just think we often don’t find it in the places we look for it because it is often not in the place it was primarily designed to be…within the people of God.
the greatest song of all times……that and “go west young man”
The whole momentary friendship has been on my mind a bit with regard to Facebook etc. Makes me wonder if these sorts of programmes will change that process of “forgetting.”
As far as community, well I like Bauman’s description in Liquid Modernity – it is a zombie word. You know, it moves, it walks, but really, it is dead (or undead). I think it is broken because like most people I know, when I’ve experienced “community” it doesn’t really match up with the idea of community that I have in my head (or that I read others talking about).
in some places it is broken…by people being too busy or not caring.
in other places it is alive and well by people taking the time and caring.
and you have on too many clothes to sing any Britney song.
I’ve been part of an “intentional missional community” for the last 2 years…and I’m pretty sure that the first time we really experienced community was last month when we decided to let it go. Though we will most likely never all be together again in the same place, we are bonded together as a community. We have learned something together. We have a connection that comes out of corporately dying to ourselves and our own picture of what community ought to be. We will forever love and respect one another so much more deeply for having walked this together. It’s almost as if community is what happened while we were busy trying to look like a community.
One thing I can say now is that I will never expect a community to fill my need for community…I think it goes back to your bath metaphor of floating. When we try to make it be what we want it to be, we lose it…we sink.
I think we are in danger of placing the goal of developing community over the goal of being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Community is meant to be part of that process, not the end. Community is US. Community will always be incomplete, because we who enter into it are in process. The question is are we open to God in it? Am I willing to be obedient to enter in whether you make me feel good or not?
I really like Ephesians 4:1-16. Paul makes it clear that we are to grow up in all things into Christ, who is our head. The community plays into individual growing, just as the individual plays into the community’s growth. We are all together the body and the bride of Christ, which to me means that we are all community to each other, whether our encounters are brief (i.e. reading and responding to one another’s blogs) or long-term (i.e. your spouse or your local church or your lifelong friendships).
I pray that you will have grace for me as I share where I’m at in the process of exploring community:-).