Peace Out

Chris

• noun (pl. communities) 1 a group of people living together in one place. 2 (the community) the people of an area or country considered collectively; society. 3 a group of people with a common religion, race, or profession: the scientific community. 4 the holding of certain attitudes and interests in common. 5 a group of interdependent plants or animals growing or living together or occupying a specified habitat.

— ORIGIN Old French comunete, from Latin communis ‘common’.

I think that all 5 of these definitions of community can be useful for informing this discussion. Also informing my side of the discussion are chapter sin the following 3 books:
Postmodern Youth Ministry; Tony Jones
eMinistry; Andrew Carega
rewired; Peggy Kendall
To make things easy, i’ll take each chapter in turn, starting with rewired:
basically, in her section on virtual community, Peggy talks specifically about online community and the issues it raises, there seems to be no discussion or questioning of the presence of online community. her focus is on the lack of ‘responsilbe’ adults within teenage online communities, which could and does then lead to a lack of adult accountability amongst teenagers. no credit is given to peer accountability on the teenagers part, she seems quite resigned to the idea that without adult supervision and authority all teenagers will resort to swearing and sexual innuendo. An idea that may have some basis in reality, but I don’t think is a fair judgement on all teenagers. not that I’m supporting mono-generational communities!

What about Carega?
Carega also seems to go with the assumption that communities do exist online, then spends his chapter wondering why? He asks why more and more people are seeking to experience online community. What does it offer that people aren’t finding in ‘real life’ is his main question. He also spends some time acknowledging and thinking about those that argue point blank against the viability of online community. But ends up concluding that their definition of community is all about geography and physicality. Perhaps they are right? Who’s to say that community can only have one definition?

So what about Jones? i like jones approach, because he isn’t approaching the idea of community from a purely online context he isn’t hampered by what examples and inspirations he can call on. He doesn’t have to trawl the web for examples of online community that works, he just has to call on his and his peers experiences of good and bad community. He talks about community being a place of support and relationship, Jones is more concerned with community being authentic and honest than where it happens and what group of people are involved.

Obviously the 3 ‘reviews’ above are not extensive about the relevant chapters, for a fuller picture of what each says I would recomend looking up the book, i just wanted to give you and idea of what I’ve been reading while pndering this question. As I write this blog, I’ve asked my twitter buddies if the think community can exist online, If there are any responses before I finish this post, I’ll include them at the bottom. if you use twitter and want to follow me search for Chris_Hoskins

what about me? This is my blog, what do i think?
Bascially: yes, I do believe community can exist online. i don’t believe it will be as mutually beneficial as community which exists in the physical locale, but I still belive it can exist. All we need to do is respond to the notion of online community with a re-evaluated notion of what community is and can be. If we revisit the oxford english definitions again; 3/5 definitions rely on locale. 2/5 rely only on holding an attitude/belief/interest in common. And I’m quite happy to hold belief in all 5 definitions of community and accept that no community is likely to ever fit all 5.

I’ve found over the last 3 years that it is those whom I converse with online rather than in person that I’ve found to be most supportive in hard times. Does this count as community? Apart from my wife, most of the people I would consider my closest friends live at least 60 miles away from me, some even on a seperate continent. Yet I would still consider them to be part of my community, why shouldn’t I? how could i recieve support from and give support to my friends in Canada, none of whom I’ve had any physical interaction with for 5 years, and not consider myself in some sort of community with them?
Another case in point would be #twurch. A twitter ‘community’ that I was intorduced to through Stewart Cutler twurch is basically a group on twitter who both twitter and are Christian. I’ll include a twitter quote at this point, from tobite, a fellow twitterer who I’ve started talking to through twurch. He answered this to my twitter question: tobite @Chris_Hoskins yes – #twurch being a good example of this. I have met new people and am forming new bonds and friendships

I’ve just recieved a corker of a tweet from headphonaught, another twurch friend, he says:  headphonaught@Chris_Hoskins community isn’t a physical thing anymore. its a collective ideal. its the sharing of & participating in something beyond us
I love that notion of community. Even more so now that it supports what i said earlier about changing our definition of community in light of new experiences and revelations. It’s also, i think, a pretty good definition of church, no?

I hope this is all fitting together and making sense, I’ve not planned it, just sat down and let it come out!I wasn’t looking to write an academic text, just letting some stuff out of my head!

I think I’ll finish there for the time being, please comment and add to this discussion, i may come back and add more at somepoint.

Peace out

Chris

ps: this post is also available at missional tribe and SYMN

footseps in the graveyard

I took this photo as some of the Sunday Evening youth group were walking up through the graveyard to the Church hall this evening. I love the eerie, ghostly effect the long exposure gives the 3 figures, can you see them all?

I won’t be able to put my next 4 photos up until Friday, Linda are away in Barcelona until late Thursday night. Have a good week!

Peace out

Chris

After visiting the Mount of the Precipice, we visited a replica, working, first century farm in the middle of Nazareth. It was quite interesting, as we were being taken round by the guide he would explain how parts of the farm worked into the parables that Jesus taught. it really brought a whole new angle to the parables when we saw what the kind of farm Jesus referred to would have looked like. Below is a picture of the threshing floor at the farm, for some reason I’d always pictured it looking similar to the malting floor in a traditional Whisky Distillery.

After being served lunch at the farm, we visited some Churches in Nazareth: The Basilica of the Annunciation, St Josephs and the Greek Orthodox church of the Annunciation. all 3 Churches were awesome to visit. I have long come to the conclusion that i don’t really care how historically accurate the locations of all the Churches connected to Biblical characters/events are. To get anal about that would serve only to take away from the experience of God that so many people have in them. but lets not get into that quite yet….
Basilica of the Annunciation. This was visible quite clearly from the precipice. It’s a huge Church, quite impressive to look at. As its name suggests, It is named for the event of the Angels announcing to Mary that she was to give birth to Jesus. In the courtyard, there are many pictures of the Madonna and Child, each individualised to a different country, below is a picture of my favourite one, from Croatia. Inside the Church, there is another Church! This second Church, known as the grotto, is believed by many to be the original childhood home of Mary, mother of Jesus…..The Basilica is the site where Roman Catholics believe the annunciation took place, we also visited the Greek Orthdox Church where they claim the same event took place. Excavations on the grotto are still taking place, it was quite cool to watch archaeologists at work for a short period…



After the Basilica, it was on to St Josephs Church, which, as you may have guessed, was built for Joseph, “Father” of Jesus. Again, this was an incredible place to visit, complete with a green lit cavern that is reputed to be Joesphs workshop. What was interesting to find out was that, although we typically describe and think of Joseph as a carpenter, it is thought to be more likely that he was the 1st century equivalent of a construction worker/handyman. Able to turn his hand to most things involving stone or wood work. Which comes back to us in many of Jesus comments about wood/stone in his teachings.
After St Josephs, we went to to the other Church of the Annunciation, the Greek Orthodox site. This wasn’t as huge a Church, but still impressive nonetheless. As a Greek Orthodox Church, it had an impressive Iconostasis at the front (picture below) and also had a small chapel built over a spring that iscalled “Mary’s Well”. Guess why? Miss Whyte was given a row by one of the caretakers of the Church when she crossed her legs, we were then informed this is an insult in Arab cultures!

Once we returned to the hotel, we enjoyed an amzing dinner and then headed to the bar to chill and chat about the day. In the bar over the next few days, a small group of us, Jonnie, myself, Nicola, Rachel and Suzi became quite freindly with some of the bar staff. One in particular stands out: Lavi, a fantastic guy, always up for banter and introduced me to Arak, a fine liquer that is quite tasty!


So thats a “brief” account of the first day in Israel. An easy day to write about, in that all we did was visit sights, it was a Biblical history day, whereas some other days had a much more humanitarian/political aspect to them…….
Hope you enjyed reading this and that you’re up for some more over the next few days, I’ve a lot to write about about the trip!!!