So Redwood is starting a series on community. For the next six weeks we’re going to be looking at church and community. One thought that occurred to me at Plunge yesterday, a church service is a very individualistic activity. I mean, the music worship service and the teaching, these are fairly individualistic activities. In particular, for teaching, there are two people involved: the teacher and the listener. There may be a group of people sitting in an audience, but listening is always a one-to-one activity. This is why it’s usually better as a speaker to address your listener as one person, rather than speaking to a group.
How big can a community get? I mean, even in a big community, people usually partition themselves into smaller groups. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to traverse an entire large community of people. Nor do I think it’s reasonable to expect someone to know everyone. Do we as a church communicate the message to people that they have to “get to know everyone?” I guess this is what kind of confused me about the message at Plunge yesterday, when Nathan referred to the Plunge community as a whole. Realistically, I don’t think a community as large as Plunge, and growing, can really be addressed as one community.
Communities like Plunge and Redwood, are probably just a community of communities. One big community, that is made up of smaller communities.
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