Community

What is community?? And where can I find it?? Those have been some big questions I have been asking myself recently. Tonight I was talking with a dear friend, and this very thing came up again. Then, I started thinking... What really is community, as God intended it to be? I'm still really trying to figure that out. The one thing we both agreed on though was that God created us to be in community with other believers. I was looking at my walk the past 4 years, and as I was thinking about where I grew the most as a follower of Jesus it hit me hard. I didn't grow deeper in my walk with Jesus by just going to a service on Sunday. I grew the most when I was in community with other believers. Small groups. Classes during the week. Meeting up for fellowship and coffee. Serving the community, while being in community. That's when I grew the most. Not siting for an hour hearing the pastor give the same message he has all weekend, but it was where I was known at. Where others had invested in me, and I invested in them. That's where there was growth and Jesus at the front of it.

Tonight I wrestled with another question. Where do I find community? What happens when the community you were apart of in so many ways was taken? What do you do then? Do you just go with it and give up, or do you try to find a new place with community and form it there? This is where I'm at right now. Hopelessly wondering around in a false sense of community, hoping to one day make a difference, but also to be heard and seen again. Would you be noticed if you weren't there anymore? Would you become just another face in the crowd of strangers? When is it time to realize that community is not there anymore and it is time to find community and fellowship some where else? You are not able to feed into them anymore because you can't find them in the sea of faces, and they can't find you. Why must we destroy solid community to create more community, only to find that instead we have lost the vision of what Christ had for community.

So now I ask myself, is it time for me to continue to grow in my walk with those I'm in fellowship and community with? Or is it time for me to become just another face in the sea of lost faces and hope to find community again at some point?