11.18.08
How to Create Community
Our church recently hosted our first ever all-church retreat. We rented a place just outside the city and moved our regular church meeting off site. We mostly just wanted to get together with everyone and talk and pray and dream together. I think this meeting was part of the baby steps we need to make to begin turning leadership and ownership over to non-Americans.
During dinner we started talking about community, and some of the ways we can help foster or create communities both among ourselves and with non-believers. Daniel really amazed me with his is simple, but I think very accurate, response:
Dove si mette le mani, già c’è comunità. There is community wherever you put your hands. The men he works with form a community. The people we eat with are a community. The things we do in our free time form community. In other words, whatever we are involved with, whatever our hands do, that is the place that God has put us and that is the place where we need to sow the seeds of the Gospel.
I really appreciate his insight. Instead of assuming people need to attend some church function to be a part, it was a reminder that the “church” goes wherever a believer goes. It was a reminder to let God work in what we are already a part of instead of trying to create an additional, and perhaps artificial, community.
Good stuff, Daniel! Any comments…?
Sandy Reid said,
11.18.08 at 4:03 pm
I found your blog while researching for my missions class. I attend a small Bible College in southern Ohio. The comments were very insightful
Heather Seybld said,
11.20.08 at 10:12 am
great insight and so true! how come we all can’t think like this?