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Community. We all like the idea of community, but the reality of sharing our lives with other flawed humans often doesn’t play out the way we imagine. Several articles came across my feeds this week about this topic, and they motivated me to look through some things I’d saved to find more on the timely reminder.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
7 Tips for Making the Most of Church … at Val Marie Paper. If meeting together was recommended to the folks in Bible times, how much more do we need it, living on our private little islands of isolation.
This quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer about community showed up in something else I was reading, and stood out after reading the above article. It is so spot on, and a reminder that most of can relate to. It starts like this:
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial.
The rest of it is just as thought provoking…worth a read.
The Millenial Island: Friendship Perverted … at A Princess Castle to Call Our Own. Jess hits the nail on the head with this piece on how friendship and interaction have changed, and how this leaves us craving connection.
Four Words that Will Radically Impact Your Hardest Relationships …at A Divine Enounter. Community is hard because people are invariably involved. And people fail. They can intentionally or unintentionally hurt us or simply just make our life difficult. If you’re looking for tangible advice, this is it.
7 Ways to Not Reach the Lost this Christmas… at Maidservants of Christ. And finally, something just for Christmas that made me chuckle a little, and made me think about how we build community (or don’t). Helene also wrote recently about learning to get along with our families, which I think applies to building community at large as well.
What do you find to be the biggest challenge to building a successful community?
*A brief disclaimer…I found these particular articles read-worthy. That doesn’t mean that I agree with or advocate everything on the site on which individual posts appear.
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