I need your help. Yes I think it's cool you are checking out the blog, but I really need your help. It's hard for me to ask for help, but here goes...
September 7 I am speaking at LFA. My thoughts are centering around community, social networking...We are starting small groups a few Sunday's after I speak, so I am hoping to convey the purpose and need of community.
So here's where you come in. Don't just read this and move on, but get involved in this community. I'm calling all of you out, leave a comment about your thoughts about community. Why it's important or not, why you are involved with others, or not...
Share your thoughts on blogging, twitter, facebook, myspace, whatever is for you.
Really, comment before you leave.
5 comments:
Not sure how I feel about the whole finger-pointing thing, but I will leave a good comment anyway.
In reading this question, I started to read in Genesis to re-visit the purpose that we were created for. God created the heavens and the earth. Then he created man so that someone could have charge over His creations. Eden was created so that Man could have somewhere beautiful to commune with God. the beauty of Eden was specifically for Man.
Despite this perfect place, God realized that Man was alone and needed help. This is why the first companion was made - to help God's special creation. I believe that he made that second person a woman so that man could then be blessed to create family and establish a more personal relationship with his offspring.
If we look at it through the purpose of Eve, we see that God created others in this world so that we could help each other. Even though Eve gets a bad wrap because of the whole bad apple thing, we need to realize that God could have just left man by himself in that garden. He could have made man absolutely capable of self suffiency, but He didn't. He created us with a void for the puzzle piece that is shaped like friendship. If we don't have that missing piece, we aren't an accurate picture of what we were created to be.
God gave us the need for companionship in the beginning, so we should do all that we can to cultivate that in us. Small groups, social networking, focus groups, and the like are fulfilling the need for relationship that is in our genetic heritage.
I think community and social networking are very important. Think about an 18 year old high school graduate who moves to your city and has no family close by, everyone want to be accepted in some form, so if he feels the church reaching out and really making him feel welcome he is more than likely going to keep going back to your church. As time goes on he would feel comfortable confiding in someone in the church when things hit the fan for him. Remember when we used to go into malls and talk to teens and witness. I went to this church one time that was just so to themselves it was unreal. I think one guy told me hello. I did not feel welcome at all, more like I was intruding in their church.
Let me see... blogging and websites... I mainly use them because I do not live in the same state as any of my family. It is a good way to keep in touch and see their pictures. Plus sometimes blogging is good to just clear your head.
I never thought I'd see something bigger then your head, but the up-close finger almost does the job. And is that a western cowboy shirt you're wearing?
The church needs to come out of its cave of fear and embrace and thrive in new concepts of connecting and dialoguing with humanity. For some reason we still think our best form of evangelism is cheesy bumper stickers and "revival" meetings.
Jesus loved (and still does) people and was probably the greatest social networker in written and oral history. In three years, he amassed an army of fellow networkers, who proclaimed, in true fidelity, a better way to live.
The creative expression of our faith lies in our ability to communicate the transcendence of grace. We must embrace every form of networking and communication and envision it as a platform for the demonstration of life to its fullest.
We should set our sights on the mass-globalization of every local church (and by extension every Christian) and thrive at efficient communication.
In my opinion if it wasn't for community we would even be able to live. I was thinking about this today while i was working and i was thinking what you can compare community to. The best thing I came up with is its like a family tree. Community can be branched off into many different things. For example my job, my church, and my family would all be different communities even though I am apart of all three of them. Everything we do comes together as one even though the things you and me do are different. In order to have an effective community we need relationship. We all need to be in sync with each other to be the most effective, if that makes any sense. I thought about the human body when I was thinking about this. Every body part we have is different and have different functions but they all work together as one. We are most effective when everything in our body is healthy and working like it should. Some things are more critical than others but we need each thing doing what it supposed to do to be the most effective. For example, I love driving around just thinking about life. I have had my license for awhile now so its pretty easy for me to drive, but lets say I break one of my arms. I could probably still drive but it wouldn't be as easy. The thing I am getting at is the more we do something the better we get and more in sync we are but when the slightest thing goes wrong it throws everything out of sync In order for our church community we all need to be doing our part to the best of our ability. I dont know if any of that made any sense but you said to give what I thought so I did.
I also people dont do there part in community because we don't always see the results then. People these days always want to see the results when we do something, but in christianity we may not see the results until we make it to heaven. I think its our faith that keeps us from doing things.
Here is a good quote by Mark Morrison-Reed that I like. "The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen. Together, our vision widens and strength is renewed."
I believe communities not only strengthen us but show our strengths. In particular, home groups. Our home group had two couples desparately wanting to have children. The first couple decided they would adopt after being unable to have their own. They went through many "false alarms" even trying to adopt. They became frustrated and really cried out for help. They shared with us in our group and we begin to pray with them and for them. We then watched as God layed out His plan and now you know The Keeners have 2 beautiful daughters. Darren and Lesley Williams tried everything to have a child of their own. They also shared this in home group. We prayed specifically that night for God's will. Lesley said she would not do anything else to her body to try to conceive. It was then that God did his thing. As you know they have beautiful twin boys. This not only helped to strengthen their faith but helped show their strength in relying on God in both situations.
When we are involved in a community such as Home Groups sometimes we are the ones who share strength and sometimes we are the ones who are strengthened.
I think this also pertains to helping people outside our church. We often are blessed while being a blessing. I look forward to more projects outside the church. Look at what New Beginnings is doing. They have taken some of the things Pastor Carter suggested we do and they did them. I would love to start some of these projects to show the love of Christ to our neighbors. They will not come if we do not show them the way.
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