As I've let you know over the past few days, this is a new theme and challenge that I am taking up for myself. Today, I want to focus for a moment on the second word of this theme: community.
What is a community? In a very general sense, it is a gathering of people in some form. I use this definition because you can have a local community made up of the people around you, or you can have a specialized community, such as a community of faith. It doesn't merely have to be people in a physical proximity to one another, either. I have a couple of online communities that I am part of. I also have a community of runners, and a community of people at the gym, as well as a number of other smaller communities of which I am a part.
While there is some distinctiveness to each of these communities, one thing that they all have in common is people. You simply do not have a community without people. And so, as I am looking to be about the business of building community, that means that I am striving to bring something of value to that particular group or gathering of people of which I am a part.
That also means that there will be some specific things that will "build" each of those communities. What would be needed in my local neighborhood would not be the same thing that would be needed with the runners that I know. A community of faith may have significant differences in a community created around food. In a way, this means that, if I am to build up each community that I am a part of, I have to know what particular skills or words or actions will serve to build up that community.
I know, it sounds like so much common sense. However, I have seen it happen way too often that someone is part of several different type of communities, and yet they apply the same criteria for building up those different communities in all situations and circumstances. While there may be a number of things that each community needs in common, very few communities are such that a one-size-fits-all approach will work.
What is a community? In a very general sense, it is a gathering of people in some form. I use this definition because you can have a local community made up of the people around you, or you can have a specialized community, such as a community of faith. It doesn't merely have to be people in a physical proximity to one another, either. I have a couple of online communities that I am part of. I also have a community of runners, and a community of people at the gym, as well as a number of other smaller communities of which I am a part.
While there is some distinctiveness to each of these communities, one thing that they all have in common is people. You simply do not have a community without people. And so, as I am looking to be about the business of building community, that means that I am striving to bring something of value to that particular group or gathering of people of which I am a part.
That also means that there will be some specific things that will "build" each of those communities. What would be needed in my local neighborhood would not be the same thing that would be needed with the runners that I know. A community of faith may have significant differences in a community created around food. In a way, this means that, if I am to build up each community that I am a part of, I have to know what particular skills or words or actions will serve to build up that community.
I know, it sounds like so much common sense. However, I have seen it happen way too often that someone is part of several different type of communities, and yet they apply the same criteria for building up those different communities in all situations and circumstances. While there may be a number of things that each community needs in common, very few communities are such that a one-size-fits-all approach will work.
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