Community

PROGRAMS

The Lost Art of Community

The practice of community has changed dramatically over the decades. Once upon a time before the Industrial Revolution, community meant your support structure for when you needed help. People knew each other and regularly checked in on each other. Community gatherings were critical to staying informed and in touch with each other. Most communities had churches that played a role in regular communion and fellowship with your community.

As time went on, the demands of life and work started to pull at the laces of the community. Newspapers began to take place of some of the communication structures that for so long had been face to face. Larger communities became less connected personally for many reasons.

Eventually with the popularity of motorized vehicles, people were able to reach out and expand their territories further and further. While local communities became more disconnected from each other, unique niche communities began to form. You were now able to connect more with people based on interests or common activities, less restricted to your local geography. Jobs became available further and further away from home. Especially with the advent of commuter travel and public transit.

Then came the worship of entertainment as a distraction. TV, professional sports, Hollywood, the internet, cell phones. While none of them are inherintly evil on their own, all played an equally negative effec, the erosion of what used to be simple community participation. In the world we live in now, the basic skill sets we used to have seem to have been replaced with a cult of distraction. Many people simply do not have the skills anymore to interact with responsibility, maturity and compassion for their neighbour. Skills that would have been passed down from generation to generation before, are slipping away from year to year, until we find ourselves needing to learn how to be in communities from scratch, and learning the social lessons that would have been second nature before. The ability to share yourself with your neighbour can be a challenge now more than ever before.

The Devil wants us to remain islands within ourselves. The more we are separated, the more we are easy pickings for his diabolical ways.

So the application of Community programs carries with it so much more than just the simple immediate effect of a pancake breakfast or vollunteering at a blood donor clinic. Each and every community program has the opportunity to plant seeds of life back into the groups it touches. The chance to talk to someone and connect is a gift from God that He wants you to capitalize on. So try to find your moments and sieze them when you can. Lets do what we can to build some relationships again that we were always meant to have.

Here is a link to the Supreme page for Community Programs that outlines the basic concepts in what we try to present to everyone in an effort to assist our communities, while also finding those circumstances to build each other up along the way. Love the people out there. They need you.