I have been waiting with anticipation for a book by Joseph R. Myers to arrive. Called 'The Search to Belong' and subtitled 'rethinking intimacy, community and small groups' I reckon it might be just the right thing to be reading as I lead SMC through a vision casting and implementation process that is focussed on becoming a community of communities. At time of updating this blog I am still only in the first chapter and already feeling disturbed and challenged in how glibly I use and have used the words 'belonging' and 'community'.
Myer's quotes from someone called Larry Crabb;
"The future of the church depends on whether it develops true community. We can get by for a while on size, skilled communication, and programs to meet every need, but unless we sense we belong to each other; with masks off, the vibrant church of today will become the powerless church of tomorrow. Stale, irrelevant, a place of pretense where sufferers suffer alone, where pressure generates conformity rather than the Spirit creating life - that's where the church is headed unless it focusses on community."
Hmmmm .... makes you think doesn't it?
I really want to see true community developing associated with SMC but I realise that we are going to have to process the question of belonging in relation to community because as Myers puts it "Most of us have always believed that a person could 'belong' as long as their definition of belonging agreed with ours."
More on this at some point soon.
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