Community building

Steve Davis, who a few of you may know, and one of you may be :), recently remarked in his best pedagogical style "You build community by eating together, by having fun together and by working together". I thought that was rather succinct.

How does your church (or socio-political organisation du jour) rate at community building in that assessment? Where does community come in its priorities?

My old church was, I think, fairly typical. There was supper after church and some special groups merited the occasional dinner. There was general chit-chat time, though always at the end of things. There was some fun to be had, but people didn't really feel okay about it unless it had some educational element so in fun-terms it ranked about the same as educational computer games, for anyone who's ever been subjected to those. And there were bible studies, which are kind of work, but not really. Christians will frequently bemoan the fact that they restrict their Christian-ness to one day of the week (though many who aren't Christians, particularly SMH readers, are keen to see those restrictions continue :) ), but when you look at that question in the light of a specific goal or value like community building that you understand why the church has vaporised over the last century.

My current church still clearly bears the marks of this background. There are very few social engagements amongst church members that are not explicitly religious in some way, as though we didn't all do non-explicitly-Christian things with the rest of our lives and couldn't share these things with other Christians without destabilising the very foundations of the church.

But there are other things that are different and, for me at least, unheard of elsewhere. One almost-exception is Cornerstone, which is live music once a month in the church. It is Christian bands, and the church has actually become a somewhat important venue on the small Australian Christian music scene I'm told. The difference is that it isn't made into another church service. Bands play music, which - not having a status quo to adhere to - almost always blends sacred and secular concerns; one song about the pain of a friend leaving the faith next to another about the awkwardness of having your voice break.

They also run a drop-in which feeds 40 or so homeless or otherwise less-than-wealthy people a few times a week. This will occasionally involve a short Christian talk and among the various programs, services and other help that the drop-in team and church provide is included a bible study designed to be friendly to people who aren't middle-class intellectuals. However the focus is on building a community of people who share meals each week; with Christianity unashamedly present, but not dominating or excluding all other concerns.

The result has been startling and now a significant proportion of the night service at church each week is made up of people who joined the church via the drop-in. Not because they are treated any differently if they join the church, but because the barriers to feeling welcome in the church are broken down by sharing meals with others from the church first, along with the whole aspect of seeing the church help people in practical ways as well as spiritual.

For a while, before it became unviable due to dastardly corporate retaliation, they even ran an employment initiative providing back to work programs for long-term unemployed collecting and recycling printer cartridges. Participants got their confidence back in the workplace and got to see a christian model of the workplace and workplace relations.