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Whenever there is social disturbance, like the terrible riots in various cities last month, the question of ‘community’ arises. Do people feel part of ‘their community’, are they connected to the community, and so on.
And I often wonder what is meant when we are talking about ‘community’ in this way.
What does it mean for me or you to belong to our local community, and how do we define it?
The question comes up in my mind from time to time when I am asked to represent the local community as, for example, a stakeholder on Daisy Dip, or on the ‘Police and Community Together’ Meeting, held regularly in the Community Room at St Alban’s.
You might remember that there was quite a fuss in 1987 when the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said in an interview for Women’s Own Magazine, ‘I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people… are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!’
We probably disagree with those sentiments!
Things have changed a lot since then, especially with mobile phones and computers and the way we communicate with each other, and perhaps today we would say we belong to ‘communities’ rather than ‘the community’.
In this part of the City where we live, there are many communities, some defined by where they live, some by the interests they have, and some by the people they are.
As Christians, we believe in community, although we often use the image of the body to describe what we mean - nearly every Sunday we hear the words, ‘We are the Body of Christ, in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body’.
We are the community of Christ, and are sent out from worship to be salt and light in the world, to bring something special in love and services to the other communities of which we are also a part.
It’s a role which is as important as ever in our local community, our City and our world - and perhaps the more we can do that, the less likely we are to have people who feel no connection to their community, a feeling which contributed to the riots we witnessed last month.