What is community?

The things that make you happy may not be the same as mine, and that is good as it would be very boring if we were all exactly the same. God in His wisdom made us this way.

The word community is one of the current buzz words. If your project is ‘community based’ it will possibly attract funding, change the name of your church to ‘community', are you part of a ‘community’ where you live?

My friend Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia helped me with their interpretation of the word. It tells me that the word "community" is a broad term for fellowship or organized society and with roots in French and Latin words meaning ‘together and gift’.

It also told me that sociologists are yet to reach an agreement on a definition of the term, and that by the 1950s there were 94 discrete definitions of the word.

On this basis alone it must be difficult to produce a ‘community’ where everyone is in agreement!

In Biblical terms Jesus prayed that we would be a community – that gift of being together.

This is explained when we read John 17. This is the chapter where prior to His crucifixion Jesus prays for himself; then prays for His disciples and then prays for all believers.

In this final prayer for us He prays that all believers may be with him wherever He is and goes on to ask the Father that ‘your [God’s] love for me [Jesus] might be in them [all believers] exactly as I am in them” TM V 26

What a wonderful community this would be if we loved each other as God loves us – what a gift of being together!