Last week I gathered with family for a reunion, with colleagues for a conference, with neighbors for a homes association dinner, with church leaders at a Board planning retreat, and with friends at a small dinner party. At each gathering, I felt a mixture of belonging and discomfort. When shall I speak up and when shall I keep my opinions to myself? Each group practices specific social rules about how to build relationships and trust. Social scientists suggest that even though we are “connected” through group gatherings and social media, many of us grow increasingly lonely. There is something “more” to building community than simply being part of a group. In his book Community, Peter Block says “The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.”
I’ve been pondering what role the church can play in transforming the isolation and self-interest within our local community into connectedness and caring for the whole. Small groups, support groups, classes, circles of care, service teams are all ways that we attempt to convey God’s holy hospitality to one another. But are there also ways we can bridge beyond our stone walls to foster community? Jesus reminds us that “where two or three are gathered there I am in the midst of them.” Faith then is not just about personal belief but about hanging out with a group.
I experienced this vividly in decades of our church’s annual trek to Estes Park Colorado for Christian Community Camp. On hiking trails, introverts like my husband opened up and shared hysterical stories from his past. On junk night the teenagers raced go carts with 90-year-old Virginia Reed. Secret pal gifts of feathers and rocks were exchanged and life-long friendships developed. Inhibitions fell around campfires and distance melted between sacred and ordinary. Often those children who first attended camp as toddlers ask to come back with their families as college students because this is the place where they learned that they belonged.
God, I think, weaves us together into the body of Christ, if we will but allow our lives to be part of that tapestry of love and grace that transports the world from isolation and self-interest into connectedness and caring for the whole.
Grace and Peace,
Carla
