Community

I've been thinking a lot about stuff going on in the world, specifically in the church. I read on Rod Dreher's blog about a church that has begun to socially punish members for voting for Trump. Church denominations continue to fight for denominational lines. This is not new. I grew up in a Nazarene church that was sure the liberal Baptists were wrong, and the liberal Baptists were just sure the weirdo Church of Christ that refused to use musical instruments had something wrong with them, so surely they were, but that was okay because the Church of Christ was sure everyone else was wrong, and the Methodist? We won't even talk about them. It was petty, really. Actually, what it was was a bunch of people who all wanted control and couldn't figure out how to get along, so they divided into different groups so everyone who wanted to be in control could, but once a month they all came together for a community singing, and it was a good singing, too. They had a few planned songs, but mostly they sang what people asked for, and usually what people asked for is what everyone else had in mind anyway, and you could hear the murmurings. "Yep. That's a good one." "Oh, I like that one." Crazy divided people all liking the same songs and singing them together. But once a month they put the denominational names down and called themselves "Community", and as community, these divided groups found their way to be one choir singing praise to their one King.

Comm-unity. Comm meaning "together" or "alike". Unity meaning "in oneness".

Today I've been thinking a lot about community and how to bring people together in oneness.

I keep thinking of what my wise-beyond-his-years 16-year old son said about our group in the RCIA class.

He said he thought that group was the most like real church was supposed to be that he ever experienced. He said the point of gathering or assembling, what most of us call "church" is to:
-learn the Bible, which we did.
-encourage each other, which we did.
-develop relationship, which we did.
-care about each other, which we did.
-learn how to apply what we learned, which we did.
He looked at me and said, "Mom, when we were in that group, no one was Catholic or Protestant. We were just people learning together and caring about each other."

We were a community.

And I keep thinking of the tower of Babel when God said, "If these people are working together as one, nothing can stop them."

I'm asking two questions:
1. If, working as one, nothing is impossible for us, what could we do and change?
2. How does one build that kind of community?