Community Part 2

These are the questions I’m going to ask.

• What do you think of when you hear “community”?
• Describe a good community.
• What does it take to build community?
• How can it be hard to be in community?
• Why do you think God created us to be in community?
• In your own words, what is Paul saying in Romans 12? (Verse will be read.)

I wrote the below paragraph as a part of my paper for the Quaker Women’s Theology Conference. I think it is very applicable here. To form community we as individuals and as a group have to stop drawing lines in our hearts of who is wrong and who is right. Whether that line is drawn around issues of age, gender, socio-economic status, sexuality, race, religion, personality, or ability, it doesn’t matter. For until we stop drawing lines in our hearts of us and them, we will never fully trust each other. While any lines exist, there will always be something we could become where we will no longer be accepted in our community, and fear of one line of non-acceptance breeds fear of many. The question of lines will always be in the back of everyone’s minds whether they are the ones who drew the lines or discovered them. We are all human with faults and foibles, how can we judge the life of another? How can we tell them they are wrong when we ourselves have such a limited view of what is right? When we let go of these judgments, an amazing thing then happens: we feel released, free to be ourselves. Without a fear of being rejected for who we are, without those lines where we could cross into condemnation, we can let ourselves be honest and vulnerable in community.Now I just need a good ice breaker. Any ideas?