Tag: community

>Awards

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>For a bit of fun, every month we publish the “Editor’s Award” in our parish magazine. I am puzzled this month and can’t decide. I think I will spray the awards round.
So – drum roll –

The prize goes to all those who are highly regarded in their communities – for all the integrity and service of their lives, because rarely is such regard given for nothing.

But the more than equal first prize goes to those who in spite of great integrity and service are dis-regarded and unnoticed. Their communities and families would be much the poorer without them.

 
And the prize for creative prayer goes to friend Jenny – who rarely attends public worship – for her presentation of bouquets to brothers and sisters at a recent healing service. By binding sprigs of lavender (for healing) and rosemary (for remembrance) she captured the essence of intercessory prayer with one simple twist of rafia binding.

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Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively we shall hear, among the uproar of empires and nations, the saint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one, on the foundations of their own suffering and joy, builds for all.
Albert Camus – quoted by Dee Hock p310

Hospitable Space

David Herbert1 Comment

> Turkish people were able to gather together to watch their team in the Euro finals because one of them had started a facebook to see how many Turkish people there were around in the north-east. Facebook, ebay, youtube are typical self-organising communities in our networking society. They don’t need community workers or developers. They don’t need leaders or rulers either. Facebook has over 75 million members with 250,000 joining every day.
On the other hand, membership of many other communities are in sharp decline. Membership of churches, voluntary groups, political parties all report falling memberships. Some cynically say that people are avoiding commitment – or are they avoiding commitment they are not willing to give. Or, are people leaving things where there are rules and regulations – where they are feeling they are being organised by somebody else?
What does this say to people who want to see the development of community?
The size of membership of Facebook indicates that I am not alone in wanting to develop community and belong to community. But I operate in an institution (because the Church of England operates as an institution)and as part of “leadership” implement initiatives which create frustration when the “followers” don’t respond. Myself and others who have been hide-bound by institutional community need to learn is that communities which flourish are those which are self-organising, and which are movements rather than institutions.
Isn’t this what the early church looked like to St Luke? He describes members meeting in one another’s houses, sharing everything. He underlines how fast the community was growing.
What Facebook offers is a space for people to move into. Maybe that is what the art of living is – providing spaces of hospitality in which people can belong and grow – which reminds me – I must go and lock the church. Oh dear!
This is what the Rhett Smith has to say on the subject:

Basically, people are organizing themselves in powerful ways that thwart the traditional means of organization through leaders in authoritative, hierarchical positions. No longer do people need to go through an institution to achieve their end goal. Many churches already know this, and still, so many other don’t. Those who recognize the shift will be in positions to harness the unbelievable creative power of a church community. Those who don’t will find themselves struggling to carry out the vision for their church community.

Hope

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When an organisation loses its shared vision and principles, its sense of community, its meaning and values, it is already in the process of decay and dissolution ….. Without a deeply held, commonly shared purpose that gives meaning to their lvies; without deeply held, commonly shared, ethical values and beliefs about conduct in purtsuit of purpose that all may trust and rely upon, communities steadily disintegrate, and organisations progressively become instruments of tyranny.
Dee Hock

>Now can you see over the wall?

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>

How we need each other! This celebration of cooperation is enacted in Catalan at various festivals.Besides the people who actually climb, many are also needed to form the the base of the castell. They help sustain the weight and act as a sort of safety net. How about this as a team building exercise for our clergy conference, or something for our all age worship?

Dee Hock agonised over what makes an institution or organisation and has this to say: “Healthy organisations are a mental concept of relationship to which people are drawn by hope, vision, values and meanikng, and liberty to cooperatively pursue them.” (p120) Healthy organisations induce behaviour whereas unhealthy organisations compel behaviour and are destructive. He adds: “Without a deeply held, shared purpose that gives a meaning to their lives …. communities will disintegrate, and organisations become instruments of tyranny.”

“People deprived of self-organisation and self governance are inherently ungovernable.” (p121)

A free image from wikimedia commons

from Dee Hock

David HerbertLeave a comment

Without an abundance of nonmaterial values and an equal abundance of nonmonetary exchange of material value, no true community ever existed or ever will. … When we attempt to monetise all value, we methodically disconnect people and destroy community.

True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and interaction between the people, place, and things of which it is composed. Throughout history, the fundamental building block, the quintessential community, has always been the family. It is there that the greatest nonmonetary exchange of value takes place. It is there that the most powerful nonmaterial values are created and exchanged. It is from that community, for better or worse, that all others are formed. The nonmonetary exchange of value is the vary heart and soul of community, and community is the inescapable, essential element of civil society.

Birth of the Chaordic Order – page 43