What Is Your Community?

Every morning we join thousands of others on the highway as we drive to work. A drive that normally takes less than thirty minutes without traffic is expanded to an hour or more in bumper to bumper traffic. When we drive together it affords a wonderful opportunity for prayer, talking, planning, and sharing but when we drive it alone, it can be a long, boring trip!

One of those mornings as we inched along the freeway, the Lord began to speak to our hearts. Looking around us we realized that every day we traveled the same road with many of the same people. We had become part of a consistent anonymous community.

Although we did not know them and they did not know us, we all spent almost an hour together (two if we returned home together as well) each day. As we thought more about it we realized that traffic is not the only place we are surrounded by anonymous communities.

Every day we are encircled by people, most of them strangers. In elevators, on the street, in buses and trains, on subways--we are constantly flowing in anonymous community. Sometimes that constant crowd can even be comforting. It can give us a feeling of false security--we are not alone. Or are we?

Many people today live in neighborhoods where they do not know their neighbors. Some go to churches that are large enough that they can remain anonymous even there. Again, the anonymous community has taken the place of true community. We may not feel alone, but are we really connected?

Belonging to community is an essential part of our lives and, as constant as all our anonymous communities are, they do not provide many of the critical requirements we seek. We need interaction and affirmation. Community should provide role models and standards.

Family is an integral part of community. Yet, think about it. If every member of our family spends time daily in anonymous community, what do we bring from that to our own home? Who has greater influence on our family--us or others? And even if it is us, who or what influences us?

The role models and standards that family used to supply are now often learned from others. Young men and women used to learn skills as family members gathered together to cook or to build or to provide some other essential element of family life. Now members of the vast anonymous community step forward to teach our children those skills. The role that extended family used to play has now been replaced by friends at best and strangers at worst.

When the Lord created this ministry over twenty years ago, He gave us the mandate to help establish strong, powerhouse homes on every block of every nation. These are to be homes that know the authority of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. They are to be lighthouses to their neighborhood, a place where all the community knows they can find help and strength.

Through the years that mandate has become a bit muddled. The classes God has given us are just tools to help develop strong marriages and families so those powerhouse homes might be established. In many cases, though, the focus has shifted to the classes and not the importance of the home in the community.

We have made other mistakes as well. There is a strong community that develops when couples teach courses together and work together for marriage and family. Working together with the same vision and mission draws hearts together and creates strong bonds. We have worked for over twenty years, though, to destroy those bonds. We thought we were doing the right thing by forcing closure to the relationship and sending each couple on their own way, but we now realize that we were denying the existence of a strong and healthy community that was supportive to marriages and families. We repent for not realizing this. It is one of the things we are going to be addressing at this year's convention.

We need to help develop and to be a part of a strong, healthy community. We need to be an influence in our neighborhoods. Our families need to be strong so that we can reach others with the help the Lord has for them. We cannot afford to be lulled into a feeling of false security when surrounded by an anonymous community. We must influence it, not have it influence us.

In just a few short weeks couples and families from around the world are coming together in Denver to address these issues. Convention 2005, Families of Faith, is going to be one of the most significant conventions we have ever held. Many things are going to change as a result of what happens during those days in Denver--in this ministry, in our families, and in our communities. We urge you to be a part of it. It's time to make history instead of just watching it happen.