Community

We've heard a lot of talk about "community" these days. It does not seem to matter what circle you are in, whether it be church, business, senior adults, students, etc, everyone seems to be talking about community. Community is made of of two roots of words. Com meaning with and unity meaning coming together. We talk about a global community, but we are not coming together. We talk about the political community, but that is an area of great division. We talk about local community, but we do not even know who our neighbors are. We talk about church community, but we see church that are in constant competition with one another. Community is something that we seem to talk a lot about, but we are doing a poor job of actually building anything that even closely resembles community. We need a coming together. I say, as a pastor, that our churches need to come together, as individual congregations and as the body of Christ, and build genuine community. In these times, when people are hurting, they are looking for a place of community but they are having a hard time finding it. Community is built when we put personal preferences aside and elevate the needs of others and meeting those needs. Community is about caring compassionately for those that are in need. Community is always other-centered and not self-centered. Community is about serving the Lord by serving people. The time has come for genuine community to be built in the body of Christ. It means getting our of our houses and into our towns. It means getting out of our church buildings and into the neighborhood. Community is about building relationships with people. You build relationships with people by getting to know them. Community is all about crashing into life. Crash on!!