Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I misunderstood: who the hell wants community?!

In the last town I lived in, when I was still in a mental place of trying to make it work,  trying to find a niche for me, I happened upon (in a church bulletin) that there was a women's prayer group, and immediately I thought - this is IT!

Because my thought was about community: that we would get together f2f and pray +

Then I found out it wasn't f2f, but a telephone tree deal: this one calls that one, and - when you're that one - you call the next one. 

Ok, sure - different kind of community!

Well any time I ever got a call, it was some harried woman (and not just one - I heard from several like this) who couldn't even say hello, who just barked out prayer requests and couldn't even make a "nice weather we're having" conversation ... and then came the time when I went to call the next person, and I got a 12 year old playing Junior G.I., who refused to give her mother the phone because I didn't play Suspect to her Detective.

And that, finished THAT.

So I was blog surfing a while back now and I found a link to read the Bible in 90 days.  I wasn't especially interested in having the Bible on a timeline (what, it gets a 90 day piece at the end?) but as I am interested in the Bible, I clicked on to see more and --

Hey, wow!  You join this group to do this, see ... and you're put into a specific email group of a number of people ...and so you do this all together - you know - like a community :) 

I liked this idea!  I not only signed up, but I told others about it, too.

The Welcome emails started.  So I contributed one myself.  Hi!  I am ...

Then it was dawning on me that several women had mentioned starting the readings and - hmm.  I haven't seen them in my email ...?  Well, I'll just email the leader of the group ...

Apparently, the 90 day plan is on a website.  It actually looks like a bookmark.  Each day is given some Scriptures to read. 

Oh.

So you're referring me to a bookmarker that I could easily pick up at my local Family Christian Store?

And then once a week we're all supposed to email each other and say we are on schedule, or we're not on schedule?

AND THIS IS A COMMUNITY?!  Am I missing something here?!  Please, someone tell me if I'm missing something!  Because this is something I can do completely on my own time ...

Without pretending there is a community I'll interact with.

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