Community Living



Me in the Big Top



I’ve just got back from spending 5 days in Shepton Mallet at Momentum. Momentum is a Christian festival for those in their 20’s and 30’s and run by Soul Survivor. Thousands of 20 and 30 somethings gathered for worship, teaching, ministry, seminars, and social activities, and God met with us incredibly.

I’ve attended the Soul Survivor events before as a youth leader, but this was my first time at Momentum. It was fantastic to go and be able to soak in God at the end of what has been a great 13 months in role.

The theme that kept rising to the surface during the week was about doing life as a community. For many years, the culture we live in has focussed on individualistic needs.

Life is all about what I want. What I need. What others can do for me.

And the more we engage with social networking sites, plug in our headphones, and play on our phones, we are becoming more and more disengaged from the depth and benefits of good friendships and communities.

More and more people feel lonely, while according to their facebook they have hundreds of friends!

I’ve experienced this loneliness. Moving away to a new city where I knew no one left me feeling lonely for a long time.

My main support and community was still up north.

Fortunately, I have since found a good group of friends (who I went to Momentum with).

But life gets hard when you don’t have that community around you. And our corps/churches are the first place we should find this community. God’s plan is for us to be in community. God himself is even in community! If its good enough for God, it’s good enough for us! And it’s a command of Jesus:

34 “I give you a new command: Love each other. You must love each other as I have loved you. 35 All people will know that you are my followers if you love each other.”John 13:34-35 (NCV)

The Bible is full of verses about how we can love one another and the importance of building community. Just type ‘Bible verse’ and ‘community’ into google and see the results!
But how do we build community? What if our churches aren’t places we feel supported, but a place where no one truly knows us and we feel lonely?

Start by getting to know people in the congregation! Do you go out of your way to ask people in the corps how they are, and truly want to know? Do you know what their concerns are? What good things have happened recently? By starting conversations and taking genuine interest in each others lives we begin to build community. To all the young people that read this blog, if you don’t feel comfortable speaking to the adults just yet, start with each other! You may be surprised how much you discover about each other! Why not start by spending a few minutes at the start of your group by asking what you can pray for in each others lives, or what the best thing of their week has been?

As well as community in our churches, it’s good to develop support and community outside those places. The groups and clubs we attend are often crying out for a greater sense of community. Everyone can come and meet each week, but all we do and talk about is the activity we’re engaged in. We can attend for months, years even, without knowing what is happening in the person’s life who sits next to you. And they can know just as little about us! We can’t expect community to develop on its own.

Someone has to start.

By taking the first steps, engaging people in conversation that goes beyond the mundane, we can develop community. Or how about organising some time with the group outside the normal time?

And remember to pray. Through praying for our corps and other groups we are a part of, for the people within them, for the things they share with us when we engage them in conversation, we will start to develop community.