Being part of a Community

Life is best shared with people you love... especially in a special community of faith. And today, allow me to share with you something I took time reflecting on...

May this help you realize and value the importance of your community...or seek one, if you don't have yet.

Community

By Charles Ringma

We cannot be solitary if we are to be growing people. We need others on the pathway of our personal development.

But networks, or community, are not simply important in our personal formation; they are also the way in which we can contextualize and express our service.

Take counseling, for example. Enjoying a meal in a counselor’s home not only helps us contextualize the counselor within her or his family, but also means the person is welcomed as a guest within the family as a small community. Welcoming a person in this way can be as much a source of encouragement as the actual counseling. Sadly, we have disembodied much of the ministry of counseling and relegated it to sterile and impersonal environments.

This model can be extended in many ways. Small communities of care where those helping and those being served share life together may well be a more humane place of facilitate growth than in our more traditional institutional models. Henri Nouwen agrues for a holistic approach. He notes that ‘we should not only live in community, but also minister in community’.

Such a community based on mutuality and common participation can take on many forms. There is no one model for community. But if we allow Nouwen’s suggestion, then we will attempt to bring together that place where we are nurtured and the place of service. In other words, we will not only serve others with our particular helping skills, but we welcome them into our lives.

==================================================================

Reflections:

Being part of small communities truly helped me exercise service. The more you get involved in the lives of others, the more you get to become like Christ... and the more you desire to know and to have in you His heart for them.

I have been greatly moved and changed by my experiences in communities...most especially in the Christian communities. I learned how to serve selflessly, how to love unconditionally, how to give without expecting anything return, to trust faithfully, to walk humbly with God.

There I discovered (and still am discovering) the many gifts and talents God has given me. There I learned to use them not for my own self-exaltation but for the glory of the One who gave me all.