Community >>>

Community. You see it on billboards advertising banking opportunities as you drive down 480. You hear people in the business world throwing it around as well as people in religious circles ooohhing and aaahhing when it is spoken of. The word community has become a buzzword of sorts that seems like no matter where or how it is used draws the attention of almost everyone within earshot. What is it really though and what does it mean for us? Is it just another program destined for the same fate as so many other religiously oriented ideas? Why is it that it seems that culture is so primed for community?

I think there are a lot of reasons. I've heard it said that though the pendulum swings it always swings back. Through technology and other cultural shifts people have become more and more distant from their "neighbors". Globalization has in many ways had a direct impact on village thinking and living. There is a basic reality in human nature that causes people to want and actually need human interaction. Man is most often not satisfied with a solitary existence.

A couple weeks ago I was in my office working when I saw an instant messenger window pop up on my computer. It wasn't someone in another nation or even another part of the city, it was my wife on the laptop only 15 feet away from me. We laughed as we "chatted" for a couple minutes then realized how stupid it was that we weren't talking instead. I say this only to illustrate a point. How many people have placed themselves out of reach from others because of technology and chosen a computer screen and a keyboard as a best friend? Before you think I'm anti-technology remember that I'm sitting here on my laptop enjoying free wi-fi and getting ready to post a blog on the internet for perfect strangers to read. The point is that I believe our culture is in a way primed to receive truth via community. I know many people who may never darken the door of a church but who are very serious about having a spirituality that they can own. Is it possible that God is so focusing on relational issues in the body of Christ because he knows the profound impact that people can have on one another relationally both in "church" and in the streets?

Is God setting us up? I think so. I talk to people frequently about their desire for "true community" having seen the counterfeit at least a few other times. What if we the family of God were to build a structure who's only structure was relationship? What if that structure was sufficient to meet all of our needs and all of the needs of new believers? What if it could feed our souls and our stomachs? What if people who don't do "church" would do dinner? What if the church is really me and you and not a building or a program? The questions go on and on.

I believe we live in a time when God is giving a grace and a desire to people, many people, to be the church and to see the church grow and flourish the same way it did in the first century after Jesus' return to heaven, house to house and one meal at a time. This is a journey. A journey for old friends and new ones. Let's see what God will do in Cleveland with a few friends who are willing to love God and each other. It just may be that the dreams that God has put in our hearts can't be born within the four walls of a building. It just may be that the dreams in our hearts are waiting to be born in our living rooms and local restaraunts. The question is how will we ever know if we are to afraid to at least try? Let's be the family of God everywhere we go all the time and see what starts to change in us and around us.