Local church community-building

[joshuabgood]

No quarrels, gossip, envy, or jealousy. Plenty of compromise...and in honor preferring one another.

[Ken]

Generally speaking I look for a church that is highly engaged in the local community, not one that people might commute to from afar but don't really act as neighbors to the surrounding area. That is true whether we are talking about a Menno church or a non-Menno church.

I think churches should be good neighbors like everyone else. And I see a lot that are not. And this is NOT a criticism of any kind of Menno church, but of churches in general. The Menno churches I have encountered are generally better neighbors than many.

[mike]

What are some things that inhibit local church community building? I think physical distance from others matters which has essentially been discussed already.

There's another thing that I've thought about over the years. Because we only have so much time and energy, I think that there might be a unique problem that occurs because of the Internet. Because it is so easy to interact socially online by way of social media, email, forums like MennoNet, etc., a lot of the time and energy that we might have invested into building local church community forty years ago is now going into virtual conversations and connections. I worry that there is an unknown cost associated with the time I've spent online that has hurt local community building. How badly is local church community building hurt by the Internet? It's an open question.