Communities in a Larger Society

COMMUNITY: Webster writes that community is "...a unified body of individuals: as a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society." The simple definition in my third grade students' social studies books is a place where people live, work and play together.

I recently returned home from a trip to Michigan where I was fortunate enough to spend some time with my son's family. My two young grandchildren are learning to live within the friendly community of East Lansing. My son and I took his two year old son and 2 month old daughter to a park in town. Aidan, my grandson and veteran of this park, knew his way around and felt comfortable playing among the other children and their parents. Regan, our beautiful granddaughter, pretty much slept in her stroller during the park visit. However, that didn't keep several little female toddlers from trustingly requesting to look at "the baby." They trusted that I was a friendly stranger because, like their mommys, I was here with children playing in the park. The children and I had a common interest and therefore were part of this little park community. They felt comfortable talking to me even though I was a stranger.

It was also my experience on this trip to attend a theater conference in another MIchigan town. The fact that the attendees to this conference were from community theaters all over the United States and even one from Germany; contributes to my thoughts here in this blog about community. Even though most of the theater companys were strangers to each other, they shared a common interest in theater and would comfortably sit in conversation with each other. I have often thought that for many of our theater friends, our community theater functioned much like their "church". Everyone so different, but with this common interest in theater, they became a community at the conference.

I recognized that the common characteristics of community in those actors at the conference and the children and parents in the park were the same as the ones I share with my church family. We have a common interest. We want to help each other. We understand and make connections with each other. I also realized just how many communities I belong to. Christians, actors, parents, children, grandparents, teachers, neighbors,...whether for good or bad, are all in communities within the larger society.

I hear a lot of talk at church these days about this word "community". We are hearing that we should be more like a community. But what occurs to me is that we are already a community. We live among each other, we work, play and care about each other. We are already a community within the Church of God. What we should be working toward is being more in tune with the larger society. Live, work and play with other communities, not only church communities. Embrace the communities that form the larger society, and look for positives within that group . Encourage and lift up communities that are working to be on a path that helps each other whether it is a religious group or not. Reach out to communities that may not be contributing to our society in a positive way with the intent to help better their cause.

Community: Family: Caring: United in a common interest for the larger society--how do we connect to other communities? Christian groups ought to broaden their view of community and take a lesson from the little children and other groups outside of their religious families. Perhaps we would see answers to our questions about interacting with people outside of our church communities.

I wish I had better answers the question of connecting to other communities, but sadly I do not. I do believe our hesitance has a lot to do with our comfort zone. It is when we are forced to step out of our comfort zones and learn about other communities that we might have a chance to unify within a larger society.