Category Archives: Community Blog Party

Community Blog Party: My own take

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Wow. What a month. I worried that with all the busyness of my own life during the month of September tumbleweed would start blowing through this wee bit of cyberspace known as learningfromsophie.com – how wrong could I have been?

This past summer was a time of reflection as I was feeling bruised and battered physically, emotionally & spirtitually. I started 2011 miserable and incredibly lonely. I may have been surrounded by people - because I am the girl who apparently knows ‘everyone’ – but I knew that the loneliness came from obstacles preventing community from growing and flourishing.

How then, do we build community?  What creates community? What even is community?

And shouldn’t the girl who worked in Community Education already know this?

Just one community that I got to be part of...

We got a whole range of takes on community. Unsurprsingly (being that a lot of Christians read my blog) many came from a Christian perspective and experience of church community. But each one of our blog party writers chose a different facet, a different viewpoint, an experience, style of writing. In fact as each post went live, we ended up creating community – meeting new people, asking questions and discussing our ponderings.

During this time, I watched another showing of community take place. A gathering of solidarity to honour a friend who may have been isolated physically had used technology to ensure she was never isolated fully. A woman who inspires many (and will continue to do so). Her name is Sara Frankl. You may know her as GitzenGirl. When we realised that Sara’s time on earth was coming to a close twitter feeds and blog posts filled with a phrase coined & lived out by Sara: ‘Choose Joy‘. Some even got it inked on their body so that they will always be reminded to do just that.

It seems then that there are many things that can create community – living near each other, being educated together, shared experiences, shared interests, shared beliefs or values.

Community seems to create itself a lot of the time, but it takes work to really cultivate it.

It may come in all sorts of shapes and forms, but a cultivated community is one that is going to grow something that makes this world a better place.

If you put in that work half-heartedly the result will be insecurity.

Whole-hearted community results in everyone knowing they are valued. They are loved as people and they have a purpose in this world – they have a part to play in their community.

There’s a quote from John Steinbeck that I have posted on my wall. “It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thoughts or action we should remember our dying and try so to live, that our death brings no pleasure on the world.”

You, my friends, all have a purpose in this world based on the gifts you were given, the skills you’ve learned and the wisdom you’ve gained from your life so far.

Believe that.

Share all you have.

And live so that your presence brings pleasure in the world.

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Thank you to all of you who became willing guests of this blog party venture, donating your words, tweeting links to other’s posts, commenting and reading. It has been a joy and encouragement to host, and I so appreciate every single one of you who took part.

Here’s to another blog party in the future!

8)

Community Blog Party: Tim’s take

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Tim Hardy – writer of an occasional blog, (very) short stories and ‘poetry’; believer in God, people and sometimes the church; and pioneer of the rambling, trailing-off introduct… He most enjoys writing about himself.

What is Community?

I have no idea what community is.

None of the books on the subject convince. “A collection of individuals based around a shared interest, leader or purpose.” “That which happens within a commune.” “Something best serviced by those convicted of crimes against it.”

Okay, I made them all up but you know I’m right.

What I do know is that people are important and not just because Jesus said so – although his endorsement is a very valuable point to bear in mind. Any discussion of community that doesn’t begin by assuming the value of people is worthless. People are important and wherever two or three are gathered, something happens: something is formed. The word community fits both the verb and the noun.

So, if it’s that easy, why all the books, why this collection of guest posts, what’s all the fuss about?

Quite simply, like Soylent Green, community is people. And, like people, community is a complicated beast with all the positives, negatives and potential inherent in anything involving people. And, as with people, we find that fascinating.

My brain hurts. Here’s an obvious story:

Once upon a time there was a wise woman who needed to find the answer to a question, The Question, but the scope of the question was too broad and vast for her to begin even contemplating by herself. She gathered friends about her and asked them for help. Whilst they pondered the question, some of them went in search of the kitchen to make tea, some of them sought out music to sooth their troubled breasts, some formed small groups to discuss The Question, some went out to gather supplies (beer and pizza, pot-noodles and wine gums), some made moves to contact experts in the field, and others just sat there and thought long and hard.

But still, even amongst all this activity, the answer proved elusive.

A general appeal was made across all the available media: can anybody with any ideas about The Question please contact the wise woman (although she did not call herself that) at the address below. Offers of help came pouring in and accommodation was made for the visitors. Everybody had an opinion on The Question but few, if any, dared to venture a definite answer – those who did were quickly shouted down by somebody who thought differently.

The wise woman asked some of her friends to go out into the surrounding area, talk to everybody they came across and invite anybody who might have an opinion to join the discussion. This was a roaring success in terms of numbers but, despite everybody bringing something unique, in terms of coming up with an answer, it was a complete disaster. Different factions sprung up, each with their own ideas and methods, everybody talked at once (some quite vehemently) and some of those gathered had very precise and difficult to meet needs.

The wise woman sat down dejectedly. She surveyed the glorious, noisy mess spreading out around her and realised she had found The Answer.

Community Blog Party: Shelley’s Take

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Shelley Hendrix is a wife, mother, teacher, speaker, author, and television talk show host. She launched Church 4 Chicks in 2008. But more important than any role she fills, she is most grateful to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she belongs to and matters to God. You can connect with Shelley on facebook & twitter. 

Shelley Hendrix

Community: this word brings to mind different scenes and various emotions. I’ve experienced both deeply positive and extremely negative extremes of this. For some, community evokes feelings of joy, warmth and belonging. For others, it prompts emotions of concern at best and anxiety at worst. I’ve lived on both sides of this fence at different times in my life. I’ve lived this reality in schools, neighborhoods, family circles, and even in churches.

I’ve learned over the years that we have a very relational God—He is the one who created the whole idea of community, of living life together rather than alone. He never said “it isn’t good for man to be single.” He said, “It is not good for man (i.e. human beings) to be alone.” (See Genesis 2:18) There’s a big difference between the two. So, it makes sense to me that with this being of such supreme importance, we would find it to be the area of greatest struggle. If you wanted to take down your enemy, you’d attack what’s most vital, right?

It’s my deep conviction that because God created us to be relational, and that this is a good thing for us, we need to be intentional to press past the negative experiences and memories of times we’ve been wounded by others, so that we might not miss out on the greater blessings of ties that bind us to amazing people who just might be instrumental in helping us reach our destinies—and us, theirs.

I have friends in Phoenix, AZ who pose this question: “What if there was a place that was so safe that the worst about us could be known and we would be loved more, rather than less, in the telling of it?” THAT is authentic, Christ-honoring community. It’s the driving passion of my life: to help create and cultivate these kinds of environments within my own home, my circles of friends, and in ministry. It’s the foundation for the call to start a ministry in my home town called “Church 4 Chicks.” Out of both experiences—the worst to the best—as it pertains to community, God deposited a desire in me to be a host to environments of grace. Places where He gets to be the hero of the stories and where we get to be who we really are: flawed, fragile, unimpressive, and broken.  Places where we take the risks together to learn what it means to live out of who God says we are. Places where we can make mistakes and not be defined by them. Places where we get to be honest that our greatest wounds come through relationships and where we get to experience that our greatest healing does, too.

Community blog party: Christine’s take

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Jeff Gill and his wife Christine are the children and families pastors at i61 Church in Llandudno, North Wales. They are trying to learn about community from the people they volunteer with at their local community centre. They have three great kids. Christine is also a photographer and like Jeff is very interested in food and meeting the physical as well as spiritual and emotional needs of the people in her community. She draws inspiration from Maria Montessori, who believed that you could not teach children anything unless you took care of their family’s basic needs first, and from the book of James, which has some great ideas on how to meet the needs of the community, and of course Jesus who was always pretty decent with the poor and the hurting as well.

She tends to always be telling stories about when she was little…

I was 6 during the miners’ strike of 1984. I lived in a small mining village.

I guess the strike probably affected me differently than it did my friends, whose dads worked in the mines. My father had been unemployed my whole life anyway.

It was one of the happiest times of my childhood.

Weird, but i really do think back upon it fondly. I laugh at people who get rich and famous and then talk about how wonderful it was when they had nothing and “By ‘Eck, we lived on Mouldy bread and Cloudy Water and we had a sweater between the 6 of us and those were the Days! Ahh Yes!” That’s just stupid. Ooh yeah, having money is such a hardship, isn’t it?

And I know that If I was to go back to 1984 as an adult, I would see the hardship and suffering, families who used to be able to eat well now living on handouts etc, etc. For me, my family had never had money anyway, and we had a neighbour who stole some coal for us on a regular basis, and a forest full of trees to burn.

People’s gardens were full of potatoes and carrots instead of weeds and everyone helped each other out. It was one year that was different from all the others. There were marches through the village, everyone dressing up in silly outfits. My sisters were Martini girls. Black and white outfits, roller skates, and a bottle and glass glued to a tin tray. I was a clown. I was always a clown. I wanted to be Boy George, like my Cousin Donna was.

So everyone in the village would get up and march through the village from the tiniest to the very old and ancient people. There was no “Young people do this and oldies do this and teens do this” we all did it together.

And we marched up to the football field and there were games. Fancy Costumes were judged, races were run- middle aged men holding up their fancy long dresses to try to run faster…

People sold their veggies, and old vases and anything else they could find.

The town jazz band marched around the field with their big tin kazoos blowing (i used to call them gazoots) and we stayed there on that field all day long, It was the middle of summer but I remember dancing and laughing going on till well after dark. And everyone knew each other and the kids got to feel just as important as the grown ups because we were there for it all. And then in 1985, the strike ended and my family stayed inside our four walls, same as we always had done before the strike started, and they’ve been there since.

The kids went back to doing their thing and the adults went back to doing their thing and my little village has never known that community since.

And it is sad.

I like community. I do not like segregation. Little ones do this and bigger ones to this and biggest ones do this, maybe it’s just me, but I do not like it. I like family, not just flesh and blood family but everyone around you type family.

Can this kind of community be built without the hardships like those of the Miners’ Strike? Do we have the oomph to create such a thing?

We shall end with a song, which sounds jolly, but is sad. To especially go along with how I just made the 1984 Miners’ strike sound like fun. You be sure to sing along now.

Community Blog Party: Lisa’s take – Craving Authenticity

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Lisa is a lover of music, coffee and all things French. She is also a Christian, corporate lawyer and blogger-on-a-break. She tweets occasionally via @mylifebyfaith.

Craving Authenticity

Husband and I are not long back from 2+ years in Canada. We semi-clicked back into life in our former home town of Edinburgh during our four month stop this summer, and with our next (and last for the foreseeable future!) move in just over a week, we’re eagerly anticipating the new friends that await us in London, and settling into a new pattern of life and community.

I was scouting around online one night recently and was struck by this:

“Church should be so much more than a Sunday meeting. Church is a community of believers sharing lives.”
-Beacon Church

What a great vision for community — sharing lives.

The source of community is the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in eternal loving and harmonious community. As beings made in the image of God, it’s not at all surprising that we yearn for that sort of community. I crave close community, and yet (with the exception of my marriage) it often feels out of reach.

As Christians, we have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world — at home, across oceans, and even a few hundred miles south. I’m so full of hope for the church community that we will become a part of in London, and particularly the small group that we will join.

I crave authentic, complete community where we are open, vulnerable and transparently honest with one another about our lives; fears, folly, health, hopes, delight — you name it.

My vision of community is summed up in Romans 12:15 — “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn”.

And so, I want to encourage all of us to seek and develop community like this, particularly in our small groups. Let’s not be satisfied with “fine, thanks”, either spoken or heard. Let’s not let one another shoulder problems alone, no matter how messy or seemingly trivial they are. Let’s not forget about one another during the rest of the week.

Let us really love one another as we want to be loved. Let us take time to ask and to really listen. Let us support one another in prayer through the week. Let us carefully cultivate these relationships through the week. Let us tell others by our words and actions that they matter. Let’s really get alongside one another in love.

And when we fail, let us extend grace to one another and keep on keeping on.

Church should be so much more than a Sunday meeting.

Community Blog Party: Nicola’s take – Parish Life

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Nicola works part time at a theatre in Oxford and spends the rest of her time writing. She is part of St Michael and All Angels Church of England Church in Summertown, the place where it’s summer all year long ;)  She blogs at http://nicolahulks.blogspot.com.

Parish Life

I realised that I was part of a real community on the day we interviewed for our new Vicar. We had put on a ‘trial by quiche’ (how very English!) and were packing up the remnants. On one side of the room my neighbour in her 80s was proffering out takeaway coffee cups full of cherry tomatoes for us all to take home and on the other was my lawyer neighbour amid a blur of tea towels and washing up liquid. The room was packed with laughter and excitement. There was a buzz about the future, our future.

It’s moments like this that make me love being part of my local parish church. There are also plenty of moments that make me think twice about it. In the Church of England the whole country is split into parishes with their own local churches. When your church members are selected by little more than geography it can all end up very much like an episode of the The Vicar of Dibley with alarming speed! This may be is why people often opt out of it and group by taste rather than geography. It’s absolutely true that my view on what makes a good Sunday service are usually vastly different from people my grandparents age. But it’s also true that none of my peers have travelled the world with the British Civil Service or given the local church forty years of their adult life. There is a lot to learn in a mixed age community.

I like (mostly!) that there is no getting away when you are part of a local community. They know when you live. Short of lying on the carpet on your belly and pretending you don’t hear the doorbell there’s not much you can do to get away! But that seems healthy somehow. Members of my community are on my doorstep, they are in my home. They know when my laundry day is and who delivers my groceries. It’s hard to present a front about yourself when you live in such close proximity.

I love that on our best days we exist to serve our community, those who come to church and not. We are there to celebrate the joy of births and marriages and the devastation of loss. Often the church doesn’t live up to these lofty ideals and may not seem to connect with its community at all. The church has a lot of work to do to make this a reality. But the moments amid the washing up with my neighbours give me hope that it can. And It makes me want to give my all to see that happen.

Community Blog Party: Holly’s take

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I’m Holly, I’m 23 and I live in Christchurch, New Zealand. I’ve just completed a graduate programme for Primary Education and am about to start looking for a permanent job. I blog at Adventures of Holly. Thanks for reading my post! :)

It feels strange, sitting here writing this post a little over one year after life in Christchurch, New Zealand changed forever.

On September 4th 2010 there was an earthquake. On February 22nd 2011 there was another earthquake. In the last year, there have been over 8000 aftershocks.

This is something that nobody ever imagines happening to them, but these things have to happen somewhere, and this time it was here.

Other than how scary it is to have the ground beneath you shake so violently that you physically cannot stand up, the main thing I learned from this experience is just how circumstances like this bring people together.

Although the area where I live was lucky enough to be relatively unaffected, other people were not so lucky. I have several friends who have had to move out of their homes due to earthquake damage. Some have lost their jobs. Some haven’t slept through the night since the first quake. 181 people were killed.

But. Beyond all of this, amazing things started to happen in Christchurch. Although everybody was affected in some way, heroes appeared to stand in the gap for one another and do whatever they could to help those who were worse off. In February, USAR teams arrived from around the world to help find survivors and recover bodies. Strangers appeared to help people who needed it. I experienced this myself when I was stranded at TColl after the February quake, with no way of getting home and no cellphone to call for a ride; a total stranger drove me home. Thousands of university students formed a volunteer army to clear up silt and help out those who needed it. Neighbours who barely knew one another are now friends because of what they’ve experienced.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that when people go through awful, traumatic things, they discover a different side to themselves. A community which is bigger and stronger and more powerful than merely the sum of its parts.

This is the reason I am choosing to stay here. Although the city I’ve lived in all my life has changed forever, with many familiar buildings gone and parts of the landscape unrecognisable, this is still where I want to be, simply because of the people.

Community Blog Party: Scott’s take

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Scott finds writing about himself in the third person odd but enjoys other types of writing. He frequently wishes his brain had a brain.

Hello

I like community.

It is difficult not to like community, the concept; it is a little easier to not like certain communities, I try not to. After all community is, in theory, all about something common providing unity, which is rather appealing. We all have hopes, fears, dreams and other sorts of conceptual nouns that we hope that others have or at least understand as well.

For me at least, and I suspect a lot of you, the first community I was a part of was a playgroup, maybe you went to nursery school. A few times a week I was left in the company of other like-minded four year olds and we’d play games and make things and get juice, you know that watery sweetner saturated squash particular to churches, at the same times each session. A community I was thrust into. I didn’t scope out all the local playgroups and settle on this particular one. Similarly I didn’t get a say in whether or not I went to school let alone which one.

Your schooling is full of communities, or I suppose communal identies; from top down you have school attended, year that you are in, class that you are in, group that you are in, and so on. The rivalry between the two classes of my year was pretty intense. It informed the default split for seven years; games of football, or netball, who with and where you sat with at lunch time, where you hung out at breaktime. If this seems off-point bear in mind community tends to be about enjoying similar activities, having something to share with others, and feeling like you have a place you belong.

Then high-school happens and the previously drawn lines of division get rubbed out and you mix classes. In my first year I was split two ways, academic classes and pratical classes. In third year it was split again by subject columns, by fifth year it was spilt again. A greater and greater division of our previously established communities happening alongside that most fun transitional period called being a teenager.

When I was a teenager things, like what was interesting or smart or funny, suddenly seemed more important, more personal. I have never met, whilst I was one or since, a teenger who wasn’t a little bit unsure of themselves, split between what they like and think is important, and between what they think others like and think is important. The difficulty is that as all our pre-established communities are getting diced up by bureaucracy and life we also are becoming unsure of who we are.

It takes time to shed that insecurity I think. There is an element of knowing who you are before you can be a useful part of a community, but communities can also help you figure that out – so it goes.

Communities just take time, the good ones happen organically, without force, when you aren’t paying attention – just like you or me.

Community Blog Party: David’s Take

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David started a blog called nakedpastor in 2006, and initiated his public analysis of religion, religious community and spirituality through his writings, art and cartoons. Thousands of people are challenged and entertained by nakedpastor every day. His art, cartoons, writings and book have found their way all around the world.

David lives with his wife Lisa on the beautiful Kennebecasis River near Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. They have 3 grown children close by.

 

“Now I know what I have to do now. I’ve got to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

-Chuck Noland in Cast Away.

I felt the urge to watch Cast Away with Tom Hanks. So I watched it tonight. I think it had something to do with me feeling like a man that has to figure things out entirely on his own. I cut myself free from a something that provided me with a sense of security and comfort. I set myself adrift. Now I spend a lot of time alone. This is very strange to me because in the ministry it was wall to wall people 24/7. The struggle was to find time alone. Now the opposite is true. I’m a cast away and it’s my own fault.

I have to rediscover myself. Who am I apart from the church? Apart from my identity as a pastor? Apart from my role as an overseer of a community? Aside from me having a full-time salary with benefits? Aside from having so many people needing or wanting my time? I knew this was true when I was in it, but now that I am outside of it I am amazed at how comprehensive church was over me. It was my life and my livelihood. Everything. Now that comprehensiveness is gone. The church isn’t, thank God. But the comprehensive hold it had over every aspect of my life is gone.

And I’m finding it hard finding my self.

Community Blog Party: Giovanna’s thoughts

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I am a Family Worker, a student, a Red Cross volunteer and all the other things that girls sometimes are!!  I try to keep up with what’s going on in the world around me, and enjoy talking with people and finding out what they think of it all.  I also like driving in my tiny car to see people, eating out at new places, finding new music to listen to, and playing on the beach.

I don’t think I have enough to write about Community to warrant a guest post but would like to share with you my thoughts!

I suppose having lived out in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbours, for the last 3 or 4 years, I’ve lost sight personally of “community”. I’ve never felt like I fitted in anywhere (in any sense) and so from a personal point of view would have little to say about Community.

Where I have, however, learnt about others’ communities was at work, through the Sure Start Children’s Centre. One day I got a surprise when working with a group of teenage mums, and we completed an adapted version of The Outcomes Star, in which we removed “Offending” and put “Community involvement” instead. All of the young women felt that they scored 1 or 2, so I discussed it with them, and far from being something they cared little about, it was something they really wanted to change about their lives. They suggested going into schools and sharing their experiences with young people to help them make more informed choices about their lives, and that is how the peer education got underway.

It surprised me because we talk of the ‘hard to reach‘, ‘lack of engagement‘, and Cameron’s ‘broken society‘ and so on- the women in that group weren’t hard to reach but simply had had no experience of, and consequently didn’t know how, to step out into their community and be part of it. It’s just not as common any more to stay in the place you were born or grew up and as such, some young people, I think (particularly from typically marginalised groups perhaps) find it difficult to establish themselves within “The Community”. I hope that by facilitating the young parents’ introduction into the “adult” world around them in this way, they cannot fail to realise how much they have to contribute to that world, that they will feel more of a part of the community and ensure that all the benefits of that continue through the generations.

I suppose recent events will have caused people to lose faith in community – who wouldn’t, when you realise you might not be able to trust your neighbour (your actual neighbour, not a metaphorical one!)? I don’t know if it is a politician’s role to build community – perhaps it’s something that cannot be forced. The problem is, we are paying for the behaviour of the destructive few – which is sad…but I just don’t have the answer. And apparently, neither does Cameron. I’d love to live in his alternative reality of privilege…a bubble.