How to build community
Jordon Cooper posts up a list of things to do to build community. I think the ‘sit on your stoop’ has lost something (or maybe it has gained something!) in the translation to this side of the world. However, a good list.
Buying from local merchants is a particularly important one I think. I spend a lot of time in cafe’s running congregations, chatting with people, preparing sermons and inputs etc. In my local area I have my favourites. And you know as I think about it, they are not necessarily my favourites because the coffee or food is better, but because I have got to know the cafe owners. As Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch would say – proximity is important!
- Turn off your TV
- Know your neighbors
- Look up when you are walking
- Greet people
- Sit on your stoop
- Plant flowers
- Use your library
- Play together
- Buy from local merchants
- Share what you have
- Help a lost dog
- Take children to the park
- Garden together
- Support neighborhood schools
- Fix it even if you didn’t break it
- Have pot lucks
- Honor elders
- Pick up litter
- Read stories aloud
- Dance in the street
- Talk to the mail carrier
- Listen to the birds
- Put up a swing
- Help carry something heavy
- Barter for your goods
- Start a tradition
- Ask a question-hire young people for odd jobs
- Organize a block party
- Bake extra and share
- Ask for help when you need it
- Open your shades
- Sing together
- Share your skills
- Take back the night
- Turn up the music
- Turn down the music
- Listen before you react to anger
- Mediate a conflict
- Seek to understand
- Learn from new and uncomfortable angles
- Know that no one is silent though many are not heard.
- Work to change this.
June 14th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
I don’t wish to be rude (really!)….but we really have spent far too much time ‘in the church’ when we have to be trained how to be normal so we can engage community with normal non-church going people…. but alas how I have found it to be true.
All those years of meetings, bible studies, music practice, leadership training, have truly made us a ‘peculiar people’.
All the best with the Summit, I would like to have come along and met you guys!
June 15th, 2005 at 10:41 am
“we really have spent far too much time ‘in the church’ when we have to be trained how to be normal so we can engage community with normal non-church going people”
true, but in defence of ‘church people’ - I think that most people (including people with no church connection!) live their lives so fast today that we need to be trained to do this again. I think ‘Christians’, ‘church people’ (whatever you want to call them!) are more aware of this fact than *some* other people might be…I was chatting to a woman that runs a little gift shop near my house the other day about the fact that people who live in our area love living there because it’s community-oriented, and make a point of shopping there whenever possible because of the new desire to ‘live simply’, re-discover and re-build community, etc…
June 23rd, 2005 at 1:43 pm
Beautiful. My soul shed a tear of melancholic joy when I cast my eye down the list. Thanks for cross posting.
June 28th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Does “sit on your front porch” transllate any better?!
Peace.
June 28th, 2005 at 2:46 pm
No, Mike, ‘porch’ doesn’t work here either in the most part (although we would know what is meant by it). In order to properly translate it, it would have to be the front verandah.
July 2nd, 2005 at 5:10 pm
hehe I live in an area where there are heaps of apartments. So “sit on the balcony” suits my context. Thanks so much for posting the list. It really inspires me!