Our first day in Karachi ended up being more touristy than we expected – our meetings for the day had to be postponed until the Friday, which gave us a chance to explore the city and orient ourselves to the culture we had just landed in. You can read more about that first day on the Church of Scotland World Mission Council Blog at www.cofswmc.wordpress.com.

Here, I’ll be sharing photos with a few stories:

The Central Brooks Memorial Church compound was our home for our time in Karachi. It was a homely wee place, with a beautiful Church in the centre of it.

Muhammed Ali Jinnah was the founding father of Pakistan, our first stop as "tourists" was to his Mausoleum. A very grand, empty building. Few people around - probrably due to the time we were there at.

Jinnah's Mausoleum is surrounded by extensive grounds, a fine place to go for a walk or grab some shade to hide from the sun!

The mausoleum has a permanent armed guard (although I"m pretty sure the 'arms' date from WWII). A mark of respect for the nations forefather.

The Mausoleum's Architecture is incredibly intricate, a very stunning building. As westerners visiting, we caused a bit of a stir - all curiosity, something we soon got used to walking around the streets!

Mohatta Palace was built by Shivratan Chandraratan Mohatta, an ambitious self-made businessman from Marwar as his summer home in 1927. The architect of the palace was Agha Ahmed Hussain. However, Mohatta could enjoy this building for only about two decades before independence of Pakistan and he left Karachi for India. He built the Palace in the tradition of stone palaces in Rajasthan, using pink Jodhpur stone in combination with the local yellow stone from Gizri.

The Palace is a beautiful building, as you would expect from a Palace in this area of the world. When we visited there was an exhibition displaying the work of Asim Butt, a local artist.

The streets of Karachi were interesting to drive through. From this sculpture of the word "Allah" to donkeys, intricately decorated buses and Transvestities, you could never be sure what you would see next!

Fiona had a bit of a soft spot for the donkeys we saw, so this photo goes out to her! We spent a lot of time driving around, so numerous photos were taken from moving vehicles - not so easy! Combine the speed, jolting and the reflections coming off the inside of the glass (In Karachi we were advised to always keep out windows up) and any photo that came out vaguely in focus and without a reflection was a huge success!

During rush hour, quite a few motorcyclists and cyclists would use the pavement instead of trying to weave through the traffic!

Delivery options for white goods are slightly different in Pakistan! Riding a bike also requires much more determination, bravery and balance!

This was one of the sadder things we saw whilst out and about in Karachi. We were just leaving a fairtrade shop and I spotted 2 boys, perhaps 8-12 years old, going through a rubbish pile for whatever they could use. :-/

Peace Out

how do you define community? What words would you use? Why?
What are the markers of community?
Can a community be created? Does it only happen naturally?
Before community can ‘occur’ does it need to be given an opportunity to exist? or will comunity make its own opportunity, uneengineered?

• 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