Changing World
More than ever, we live without fully understanding what it means to be a community. Sadly our understanding of community is reduced to nothing more than a gathering of people for one or many reasons. To say that people belong to a Facebook, YouTube, or TickTock group as a community is to understand that they are part of a set of people joined to share common interests. Physically some say that they belong to a community focused on gardening or doing common tasks like rescuing animals, regularly gathering for exercises or volunteering for good causes. In this way, often we belong to many small communities.
Many decades ago, a community was understood as a gathering of people who lived in a close proximity to share tasks of working together for a common good. Today, the notion of community, though it is derived from these earlier experiences, is not experienced due to more utilitarian understandings of what a person can get out from a gathering of like-minded people. Yes, today, one does not belong to a community in the bygone sense of working together for a common good, but to gather to share common interests. In this way, people belong to many communities which may or may not work towards a betterment of a specific geographical area.
Indeed, John L. McKnight, Peter, Michael Gecan and many others who worked on organizing and advocating in order to build up communities understood how their efforts would improve social, economical, cultural and spiritual well being of people in various areas or situations. All knew the value of working locally if the major changes for everyone’s well being in the positive is to be achieved. Yet, sadly as we engage ourselves more and more through mass communication mediums of the internet, gathering from person to person in transgeographical ways fragments what we used to describe as a community into gathering of individuals according to disparate interests. It is now common to see that neighbours do not know each other, but a person on the same street may form a community with people who have similar interests from all over the world.
This, however, does not mean that people gathered for shared interests do not advance the common good of people living in an area. Sometimes, their activity may contribute to making life better for others near and far. The important thing to note is that a community today (as being part of a Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Rumble or other social media groups) is organized more around shared interests than with the purpose to build up social, cultural, economic and spiritual well being of those who live in a particular geographical area.
It is not surprising, then, a local church is also no longer part of community as lived out in Christendom, but a volunteer association where like-minded (theologically, ethically, spiritually) individuals come together to participate in common activities like worship, Bible studies and fellowship. Some members do focus on working in the areas of social justice and social assistance. Also through the organizational structure of the church, there are ways of servicing members providing pastoral care and creating opportunities to help in many mission and outreach activities. All these supposed community building activities are at best voluntary based on personal interests. It is unclear if there is an understanding of what it means to be part of a local church as a community. One can make a very reductive argument that there is no difference between belonging to a Facebook group doing a Bible study or raising monies to help those who are in need and a group doing a Bible study or fundraising for a mission outreach project.
This new reality ought to encourage Christians to ask a question: Is there a future for a local congregation bound by physical proximity?