What is Community?

     What is community? It seems rather obvious that people form communities. People are social. Simply, this means they interact with each other in community. Does this adequately answer the question? Not for me.
     There is a difference between having an idea or opinion concerning what community is and the experience of connecting with others in meaningfully significant ways. The answer I am looking for will help me understand better the experience of community, not just developing an opinion.
     Is it important to distinguish between opinions and experience? I believe so. It seems apparent that experiential knowledge of relationship far outweighs the mere idea of relationship. In other words, experiencing a relationship tells me more about relationships than just thinking about them. For example, being in an unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship teaches me what it feels like to be in one. When I hear someone speak descriptively about the harmful effects of an unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship, I will readily understand them. Why? Because I will have known what that kind of relationship feels like.
Experiential knowledge includes both cognition and emotion. That is, it requires us to think reflectively and to feel experientially to obtain experiential knowledge. Empirical evidence refers to what can be experienced through our 5 senses. Materialism, Natural Scientism and the like are worldviews based on this very premise. At bottom, experiential knowledge and empirical evidence refers to what we physically bump into while living on planet Earth. Community is one such example.
     As Christians, we are taught that God created us in his image. God’s image is relational, therefore, we are relational beings; God lives in community (the Trinity), therefore, we are created social beings.
     Just as there is a real difference between the idea of relationship and the experience of it, there is a very real difference existing between knowing God as an idea and experientially knowing him. How, then, do we enter the intimate experience of knowing him? We do so by encountering him through others in the context of authentic community. Think about that for a moment. Reflect on a few of those relationships where you felt the presence of God. Was in not in community? Jesus said, “Where two or more are gathered together, there I am in their midst.” Take a moment and read John 17. Is in not clear that Jesus desires intimate community with us? We should not be surprised. After all, God is love and demonstrated that love through Jesus, depositing in our heart the Holy Spirit that we might experientially know intimate relationship with the community of God.