Community

I went to the Twins game yesterday afternoon as part of a work outing. It was quite fun although the twins lost in extra innings. For much of the game I was consumed with the idea of how a sports team and event create such community. I've been to many games before and thought about this a bit, but it was really striking to me yesterday. Baseball is a game played for entertainment by people who get paid a huge amount of money, yet it has the power to create community.

I started thinking about a conversation I had the day before with a former boss about how I felt the employers of choice in the future will be those who can create not a great "workforce" but a great "community of workers." I believe with the movement into post-modernism (there I go again), we will see radical changes in churches (9% of worshippers are now in house churches, up from 1% just a few years ago) and in the labor force (part-time, flexible schedules, etc). There is a tremendous hunger for community and people are willing to make whatever adjustments they need to make in order to achieve it.

I think the appeal of things like sports, fantasy sports, MySpace, etc, is that it leads to community. I believe God created us to be in a community of co-dependent relationships. Our modern era with technology of email, internet, video conferencing, iPhones, etc, has led us into more relationships, but with less depth and less face-time. I believe that our need for community is no longer being met by our day-to-day activities of work, etc, and so we are looking for community wherever we can find it.

There exists a tremendous opportunity for churches to create that community. Many mainstream churches are declining in membership not because what they teach is not relevant or has somehow become outdated, but because these churches are missing the point that people are starving for real, authentic community and the traditional styles have not adapted to provide that to this new generation. Churches that seem to understand the power of connection and community are seeing growth.

Of course, every community comes with a set of unique individuals. Each is in community together, but with very different perspectives. Consider those at the twins game:
- Analytical/Thinkers - those writing down all that happened (keeping book)
- New/Naive - didn't really get baseball and were asking questions to try to understand
- Informed but not engrossed - knew what was going on, but were busy with other conversation
- Fanatics - the guys who were flipping the bird to the other team and trying to get us all to do the wave
- Blind followers - people that cheered (or booed) because others did, even though they didn't see what happened
- Wounded - the ones that life seems to smack upside the head (like the woman with red hair who got nailed by a foul ball at the game)

As leaders, our job will increasingly become more and more about creating community; a sense of belonging. With that we need to understand that a community is still a set of individuals with very distinct backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. That is a challenge, but also a great source of excitement and potential.