Authentic community

At his blog World of Your Making the Rev. Rick Lord cites a Duke University study that shows how isolated we are becoming as a culture. A Washington Post article on the study states,

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties—once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits—are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

Of this, Rick Lord writes,

a central aspect of God's dream for the human race is authentic community, and God has created and called the Church to make that happen. God’s dream is to form a people, an inclusive community of young, old, rich and poor, as a visible sign of God’s loving reign in the world today.

Lord's full blog entry Living the Vision - Shaping the Future is worth a read. What do you think about how the churches you know live into this ideal of creating that intentional community for each other. The Bible says a lot about how we should treat one another. You can read those here. As Rick Lord asks, "How would we do church differently to make such connections a reality?"

In the archives are the religion columns,
Build a sense of community in church
and
Why a non-believer may want a church

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church