{"id":15927,"date":"2018-01-18T13:29:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T21:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15927"},"modified":"2018-01-18T13:29:54","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T21:29:54","slug":"community-within-the-church-i-like-people-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/community-within-the-church-i-like-people-like-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Within the Church: I like people like me&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The problem I am working on is a simple one at first glance, why do church congregations tend to be inwardly focused instead of focusing on others?\u00a0 When I started reading\u00a0<em>Imagined Communities<\/em> by Benedict Anderson the first thing I thought of is &#8220;are churches imagined communities?&#8221;.\u00a0 I wondered what was an imagined community and how can I focus this on my problem. The more I read the more I understood Mr. Anderson&#8217;s point. As I see it, it boils down to one truth, we like people who are like us whether we actually know them or not.<\/p>\n<p>I love driving, I always have. I have lived the life of a salesman, having to drive all over the DFW metroplex to meet with customers never bothered me. My first &#8220;real&#8221; grown up job, where I did not have to wear a uniform, was 57 miles one way through ridiculous traffic. I never complained. Why do I tell you this, well we find community wherever we are. Take for example the following comedic bit from Paige Weldon entitled &#8220;Traffic Buddies&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1280px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-15927-1\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Traffic-Buddies.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Traffic-Buddies.mp4\">http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Traffic-Buddies.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>While listening to this while I was driving brought to mind the community of traffic I spent twelve years spending five hours a day driving in. Community is where we find it, and we love to be with people we are like.\u00a0 Anderson states &#8220;All the great classical communities conceived of themselves as comically central, through the medium of a sacred language linked to a superterrestrial order of power. Accordingly, the stretch of written Latin, Pali, Arabic, or Chinese was, in theory, unlimited.&#8221;[1] In other words, just because of the language used in the sacred texts, people saw themselves in community with others they had never met. An adherent of Christianity in Italy could have an imagined relationship with a Christian in France because of their beliefs. This was a powerful tool, as it still is. Imagine if you can approximately 55,000 students from all over the United States coming together for the sole purpose of worshiping God. Most will never know even 1\/10th of the attendees, but they can see themselves as one community for a three day period. That can be a powerful tool, either good or bad.<\/p>\n<p>Now think of your average Southern Baptist Church. The average attendance is just over 250, give or take. In fact, according to most studies, the amount of attenders at small churches far outnumber those at larger churches.[2] So why do we congregate with those who are like us and not reach out to those who are different? Is it because we are more comfortable in community?\u00a0 Or is it because we are scared of those who are different? I will admit myself, the last place I wanted to be is in the middle of a group of people who are different than me, this is why I always pushed back on my wife when she wanted to attend church. Something happened when I found Christ, I relished being different than those around me. My first mission trip ever was to Serbia not long after the U.N. action taken there in response to ethnic cleansing. I went with a man who had been a missionary but had to leave the field because of medical issues with his wife. One of the things he observed while we were there was the ease with which I moved into different groups while we where there. Whether it was in a home church, a bar where there was an outreach opportunity, an internet cafe loaded with gamers hopped up on the craziest energy drinks and clouded with smoke, or sitting in a garden drinking the strongest coffee I have ever had &#8220;Turkish&#8221; blend made in a\u00a0d\u017eezva. No matter where I was, I felt like part of the &#8220;community&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-15933\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/serbian_coffee_1.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Is this what God is encouraging us to be when he gives us the fellowship of the believer, that no matter where we go, we can find others &#8220;like us&#8221;. Or, is the community we have as believers meant to strengthen us so we may reach out to others to share the good news? I feel like it is the latter of the two options. We are never told to build grand buildings, huddle together and disparage the outside world. We are told to go and make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching all that we have been taught.<\/p>\n<p>I think Anderson is correct in calling them Imagined Communities. We even see it more today by way of social media. I can join any imagined community just by following or posting to some person or group. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know.[3] I can be part of any community I want to be in without even being who I am. The implications are staggering, I can be in multiple communities, encouraging multiple groups in multiple ways. I wonder if Anderson, when he\u00a0 wrote this book, could have ever imagined a more diverse group of communities, most of which have little to no use for nationality?<\/p>\n<p>[1]\u00a0 Anderson, Benedict.\u00a0<i>Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism<\/i>. London: Verso, 2016. 13.<\/p>\n<p>[2]\u00a0&#8220;Little People In Little Places: The Average Size Of SBC Churches | Said At Southern&#8221;.\u00a0<i>Saidatsouthern.Com<\/i>. Last modified 2018. Accessed January 18, 2018. http:\/\/saidatsouthern.com\/little-people-in-little-places-the-average-size-of-sbc-churches\/.<\/p>\n<p>[3]\u00a0Gruzd, Anatoliy, Barry Wellman, and Yuri Takhteyev. &#8220;Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community.&#8221;\u00a0<i>American Behavioral Scientist<\/i>55, no. 10 (2011): 1294-318. doi:10.1177\/0002764211409378.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The problem I am working on is a simple one at first glance, why do church congregations tend to be inwardly focused instead of focusing on others?\u00a0 When I started reading\u00a0Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson the first thing I thought of is &#8220;are churches imagined communities?&#8221;.\u00a0 I wondered what was an imagined community and how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15935,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15927\/revisions\/15935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}