What is community?

If you asked people to name things that are important to them, I’m willing to bet that one of the most common responses would be something to the effect that they want community.

But what is community?

It’s one of those words that I think people assume everyone agrees on. But I don’t think that is the case anymore.

It’s kind of like defining what a person is. Go ahead and give it a try. What is a person? If you say that a person looks a certain way or has certain features, then the question is — what about people who don’t look that way or have those features? Maybe you want to go down the road of mental capacity. Ok, so what about those who don’t have those mental capacities? Or is someone not a person before they have certain mental capacities? What about if they lose those mental capacities? Maybe a person is someone who has certain physical abilities. Great — what about those folks who are for one reason or another disabled?

See, not so easy, is it?

So what is community? Is it made up of certain people? A geography? Something that gives an identity? A cause? Something held in common? Just as there are questions to raise when defining person, there are questions to raise around what community is too.

One feature I have observed about healthy communities, regardless of how we are defining them, is that they struggle together. A friend of mine who is a missionary talks about this related to the community he is living in. The common struggle draws…