community(5/3)
Reading mundane details leaves me empty and unpleasantly full
William Deresiewicz writes: “Having recently moved across the country, I thought that Facebook would help me feel more connected to the friends I’d left behind. But now I find the opposite is true. Reading about the mundane details of their lives, a steady stream of trivia and ephemera, leaves me feeling both empty and unpleasantly full, as if I had just binged on junk food, and precisely because it reminds me of the real sustenance, the real knowledge, we exchange by email or phone or face-to-face.…
A sense of belonging
Your sense of belonging within a community is affected by the interplay between identity, perception, and reciprocity. Belonging, at least as an emotional experience, is never static. You move through networks of communities on a daily basis, with each community supporting a range of belonging that fluctuates based on the three factors I’ve listed and likely more. Here I’ll explore how these factors influence one’s sense of belonging in a single community and the consequences thereof.…
The inconvenience of the obedient individual is an advantage for the body
Obedience requires us to do what is right even if we do not personally benefit or would be put at a disadvantage by obeying. The inconvenience of the individual believer when living in obedience is an advantage for the corporate body of believers, resulting in fear of the Lord, long life for the body, and increase in the number of members composing the body.
Host a social site
As my desire to form multi-cultural, local/international communities grows, tutorials like Run Your Own Social Site are increasingly appealing.
Humans find meaning in community
TODO: Refer to hosting friends over the weekend. Talk about how covid affects meaning. I wonder what I might learn from Linus' thinking about communities? Much of what he explores fits with my present quandry in finding a place, not only to write, but also to engage others. It’s not that I want to build a community per se, but I do want to interact with others via some means other than Twitter and Facebook.…
Tools for building community
Linus Lee laments that tools aren’t built to assist community leaders in the formation of lively communities and suggests that we have a long ways to go. Here are a few tools I’ve found that might help. 💬 I think there’s a wide-open space for us to build much, much better tools for community leaders. A community leader’s most important job is to be the model community member and contributor – all other concerns should fade into the background of their work, and we are far from it today.…
Discipleship done biblically is always in community
I think a lot of these things rest in the issue of discipleship… Discipleship done biblically is always in community. It’s never just one-on-one. I think that’s a big mistake that Western individualists make. I’m sure that Jesus did one-on-one with his people, but you never get a view of it anywhere in the scriptures. It’s always in groups. (in answer this question from Josh Johnson, “Can we as people caught in the walls of the church, can we reorient ourselves into a place where we can have true, authentic community that’s not just a Sunday gathering?…
Allegiance to Jesus is communal
Christians, even those in a highly individualistic culture, recognize the communal nature of our allegiance to Jesus when we advocate for church attendance. When we don’t see a friend in church for a month, we become concerned for their faith. We understand that intentionally meeting together strengthens our allegiance and the loss of community weakens us. But individualistic cultures like the United States underrepresent how crucial community is to our allegiance to Jesus.…