connection & community
It’s enjoyable for me to write about Community, because it allows me to process my thoughts on something that I’m responsible for as a professional. It’s different for me to write about Community than, say, sports, because I have no professional relationship with the sports world and no one’s expecting productivity out of me when it comes to sports (except possibly my flag football team, Shiner Time).
As I’ve been in and out of meetings with our Young Adult staff, various gatherings of other ministries and staffs within our church, and just hanging out with young adults, I get the feeling that Community is a very ubiquitous yet elusive term.
I don’t have a lot of depth or an amazing arsenal of words; nor have I come up with a great method of working up to my main thought, so I’ll just say it:
There’s a difference between community and connection. Often when we say ‘community’ in churches what we’re really talking about is ‘connection.’ We can absolutely (and should) program connection. I’m not convinced we can program community.
Community, especially in our cultural context, may be something we have to disciple into our young adults the way we’d attempt to “disciple in” a missionary mindset or compassion for the least of these. The problem with this is, of course, the problem with a lot of supposed discipleship–how can I instill something I don’t have? I’ve got to start exploring the concepts of community through dependency, forgiveness, time, and proximity.
Dependency: We have to learn to lose ourselves. We have to let go of stuff and let others invade our space, the way God invaded (sorry for the crass terminology) Creation in the form of Jesus. If we can’t learn to depend on others, we’ll never experience Community.
Forgiveness: This is a natural follow up to Dependency. Why? Because people will let you down. Forgiveness isn’t easy, exactly for the reason we must do it. Forgiveness betrays our sin-nature, and we must learn that our value is found in our Creator and how he loves us first and foremost. By learning to forgive others we open ourselves up to a whole new realm of accepting God’s forgiveness and community.
Time: My Twitter starts to send messages to my cell phone at 7:00 a.m. That’s just under 2 and 1/2 hours ago. And I’ve already found out what’s going on in the lives of 6 of my good friends, none of which are involved in any sort of “community group,” small group, or accountability cell. Am I experiencing Community or Connectivity through Twitter? Obviously I’m experiencing Connection, but am I experiencing Community? I would say yes. Here’s why: Connection is a natural door to Community. However, without Time, that door will be shut quickly. I actually experience a sense of Community through Twitter because of the time I have invested in those connections. On the other hand, I haven’t spent nearly as much time invested into those I’m supposed to be attempting Community with. Interesting…
Proximity: Here’s where social environments can fail us, though I’d be open to an argument that they don’t fail us here. There’s something about sharing life together which requires that we eat in each others tables, take walks together, and enjoy a pint while talking about sports and marriage and life face-to-face. Maybe I’m just a purist? But seriously, Proximity is Time’s natural complement. They go hand and hand, and without the Web 2.0 we wouldn’t even have to separate them.
We absolutely need community, not just to grow our churches or spread the Gospel, but because it recovers something vital about what it means to be human, what it means to Live well.
