Community

Something has been nagging at the back of my mind all break. I haven't know what it was, but it felt like an urgent problem to solve. It just hit me what it is... CWS. There is a problem with CWS and I haven't been able to figure it out for 3 semesters now. I think I may have just had a slight insight into what is holding us back from being a community like some of us want. We have no stability. Things are changing way too rapidly. Between graduation and study abroad there is just too high of a rate of change for us to really grow a community. We have four years at school and then we're gone.

The church is not a building, but rather the people in the community of faith. How, then, can we expect to have a great church when there is next to no community? Part of me wonders if that is why the campus ministries aren't doing as well as they had hoped. Well, all of them accept Young Life. It's like YL is always together. They know what is going on in eachother's lives all the time. If someone is having a rough time the community lift's them up. If something good happened to someone the community celebrates with them. They are always living with each other and are sharing everything. It's the closest example we have on campus that we have to the church described in Acts. "All the believers were together and had everything in common." (Acts 2:44)

It is sad, but when I look around CWS I know about half of the people who come. That half I know well. They are some of my closest friends. The others I know nothing about. I don't even know most of their names. It's very different from last year. I felt like I knew basically everyone last year. This year I don't even really know the team very well. No wonder I'm starting to not enjoy going. I love hanging out with Sarah Dennett and Alyssa Armstrong, but I can do that outside of the service. There is very little reason for me to be there. Most of the time I don't even really listen to the sermon. How horrible is that?

I guess I just need to stop griping and try and deal with it. I would love to be able to change it, but I don't know how. I know that I can always talk to the people I don't know, but that only helps me. I want to help make the whole service better. I want to help strengthen the whole community. But how? We started a facebook group... no one uses it. I (and a couple others) want to overhaul the service, but Pastor Rachel fears that people who like the service the way it is won't continue to come. I don't know.

I feel like all people focus on is how to get the word out to the rest of campus so other people will come. I'm starting to think that we should really focus on the people we have before we try and expand. If we can get the members of our "congregation" to honestly be part of a community and be excited about it then they will spread the word themselves. We will have very little advertising to do. Word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising in my opinion. I put more weight on things my friends ask me to go to than on things I see on fliers.

Ok, my little rant is done. if you have any input feel free to comment.

<3