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What do you think of when you think of community? I’m serious. I want you to stop and think about what comes to your mind when you hear or see the wordcommunity. Do you see visions of backyard barbecues with adults talking and laughing easefully while children play in the yard? Earnest Christians sitting in well-appointed living rooms with coffee poured and Bibles open, searching the Scriptures? Do you see people caring for one another in times of crisis—meals brought when someone is sick, a pastor rushing to the bedside of a dying church member, childcare and other kinds of support offered when needed?

How about accountability groups where people confess their struggles with sin and check in with one another regularly about how it’s going? Or support groups gathering on the basis of affinity around issues like gender, marital status, life stage, various addictions or even a desire to lose weight? Maybe a community group of neighbors rallying together to lobby and raise money for improvements in their neighborhood or precinct?

Another possibility is that when you think of community you are flooded with painful memories—a church split you got caught up in, a small group that fell apart because of a disagreement or an unresolved conflict, a denomination that couldn’t resolve theological differences and splintered, a pastor who preached convincingly about community but then failed to live it out with his or her own community, a factious elder group or ministry board that stood publicly for Christian ideals but failed to practice them privately. Perhaps you have had a painful falling out with a close neighbor about a matter of shared concern, and even though you attempted to work things out, you are still in deep disagreement. Just living on the same street is now awkward and difficult—you find yourselves ducking quickly into your respective homes so as to avoid contact.

If any of these have been your experience, you may have quietly settled into a state of cynicism, going through the motions of being friendly in community contexts but knowing in the deep places of your heart that you have given up.

When the Wish Dream Dies

The scenarios described above conjure up either pleasant or disturbing images of what can happen—the good, the bad and the ugly—when human beings come together on the basis of a shared cause or some kind of natural affinity. But clearly that’s not enough. While all of the experiences highlighted in the first two paragraphs can be wonderful and important aspects of community life, none of them capturewhat community really is.

It seems that one ofthe main reasons we are confused about community is thatwe make it primarily about us—our experiences and feelings, our natural affinities, our life situation, what we think we want or need, or some vision of what we’re going to accomplish together.We labor under the mistaken idea t