What Type of Community Are You In?
“Abstract Harmony” by Eduardo Rodriguez Calzado
Identity & Purpose in Community
Practicing Community – Part Fifteen
Throughout this series, we’ve been talking about “community” as a general blanket term. But there are many different types of community. Not just spiritual community versus other reasons for gathering, but forms of collectives that have different purposes and general ways of being together. What are the reasons that we gather together?
Commonalities of some kind are what bring us together in community. They are the gathering principles of attraction and bonding that form collectives. These may be shared experiences, common intent, similarity of beliefs, access to resources, related needs, associated risks, and more.
On one level, geographical location has long been a major determining factor for access to communities, though as we have already described, that is changing rapidly. With this limitation drastically altered, nonlocal communities can form with much greater specification and specialization.
Many communities come together simply to engage in a shared activity, like a book club or choir. Here, we’re considering those with some sort of higher purpose.
These types of communities are either primarily identity-based vs. purpose-based. Of course many incorporate both, but most will have a core dynamic at the heart of why we gather: either who we are or what we are doing together (and why).
What About Church?
The most common form of spiritual community in the Christian context is “church.” This has become an encompassing yet imprecise word that conveys many different things to different people—from a vast organizational institution to a few people meeting together in a living room.
However, the original Greek word for “church,” ekklésia (ἐκκλησία), literally just means “a gathering of those summoned.”
Why have we been summoned? Is it simply because we share a commonality of belief?
Church has most often been an identity-based community, coming together to support and reaffirm one another in a shared way of seeing and experiencing the world. Being with other Christians—or even more specific, other Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, etc.
In our purpose-driven culture, often overly obsessed with “doing” and accomplishing something significant, there is value to simply “being” together. We all have the deep need to belong and have significant personal relationships with people we connect with. We should not understate or devalue the significant benefit of a nurturing community of safety, trust, and loving support in our lives.
This is also the function of another primary identity-based community form, the tribe. This is the larger “family unit” that bonds people simply through sharing and making life happen together. It is about solidarity, friendship, and mutual care. Especially as many in modern society have been isolated off from a larger shared tribe, spiritual community can serve this function in some ways. It is the sense of “home” that some may feel in a loving community. However, without a larger purpose other than the predominance of the tribe, the danger of tribalism becomes paramount—which has been far too common in religious communities throughout the ages.
Church is changing. As is the world. What are we being summoned together for in this time?
Is ICN a “church”? Perhaps, in an evolving sense. But we are also seeking to be something more than what most probably think about when they hear that word. We are identity-based as evolving Integral, Christian, Mystics. And we are purpose-based, coming together for the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.
How does enacting a purpose manifest in various types of community forms?
Forms of Purpose-Based Collectives
How do we make a difference in the world? While each individual can leave their mark in how they live their lives and what they do, we also need to do this at the collective level. Especially in this day and age.
The political party is one form concerned with making a difference. Its focus is working through governmental systems, but other forms of “parties” exist as well. These are probably better classified as movements for change. They represent a certain perspective or truth that wants to assert itself and increase its impact.
Purpose-based organizations are corporate entities that come around a common function or endeavor. They are trying to bring forth or offer something that will make a difference, and to do so they organize around a formal structure with employees and dedicated workers. Enacting greater “organization” can greatly help get things accomplished. Most tend to be results-driven, which define their success or failure.
And then there are networks, which are looser relationships of social connection among various forms of different groups, often with slightly different purposes. They may have overlapping or related interests and goals—even if different agendas—and in coming together they find mutual benefit through supportive or collaborative efforts.
Within these larger forms there are teams that are made in support of the larger entity. These are smaller groups concerned with enacting and producing a set goal.
“Crowd Sourcing II” by Nicky Spaulding
Collectives Without Community
The thing about all of these forms is that they are not communities. Community can happen in and amongst them through the type of connection that happens when people are working together on a common purpose (shoulder-to-shoulder). But this is more often a byproduct than an explicit goal and intention. Team-building exercises exist because they make more effective workers.
Purpose-based collectives can very easily leave behind the personal in pursuit of all the important doing that needs to get done. If there is community, it is on the margins or it exists in order to further the work.
Identity-based communities tend to foster deeper connections because they’re concerned with who we are together, with who one another is at the level of being. As such, they can sometimes leave behind the work that needs to be done, the higher purpose and calling of what we are meant to bring forth in the world.
These are generalizations to be sure, but they represent two poles of dynamic interplay that many groups and collectives overly magnetize—they pull to one end while repelling the other.
In this day and age, full of identity crisis, we continue to see the eroding of foundational communities of unconditional love and fundamental support. When people cannot find this support and care at a basic level, they are left adrift in the sea of life, manning their own skiff while trying to fight the waves. They are in collectives without community, paddling in the same direction but not connected together in any bonded way.
Communities of Meaning & Purpose
In ICN, we believe that gathering and fostering communities of both purpose and meaning is foundational to any work we might hope to do in the world today.
For without a community of love and support, our purpose too easily becomes overly individualized. Our own personal agendas and designs take precedence and can further isolate us.
If we leave behind our communal nature in dedication to a singular purpose, we lose our deeper meaning. We become simply a cog in the machine of progress, spun in the wheel of time—even if affecting great purpose. Some may throw themselves headlong into this work, for it’s all they have.
Some may find their meaning individually or within their family, but divorced from their work. Or rather, from their true vocation of how they are to offer their gift to the world. “To add one stitch, no matter how small it may be, to the magnificent tapestry of life,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it.
This is why we need an integration of church and network, community and organization—a home base and a movement. This is a generative community.
Through the communal reinforcement and mutual support we draw upon from a loving community, there we find the collective energy and force to manifest a higher collective purpose that is holistic and meaningfully transformative. This is necessary, because it is of the nature of the next stage of evolution. For we cannot do it individually. Remember, evolution happens together.
“Future Forest” by Martin Bridge
A Generative Community Network
ICN is, in particular, a network community. We are a small organization supporting a larger community, and we are participating in a larger movement of evolution within Christianity and spirituality in general. But how we organize is through the gathering of small, intimate communities of loving support and mystical practice.
These communities of practice (rather than communities of interest) bring us together to form the foundational support that we all need to open to greater generativity. The practices we engage in are working to further develop in us the consciousness necessary to become generative, to tap into the emergence of spirit in our time, to embody Christ consciousness resurrecting continuously on earth today.
“Global Network” – artist unknown
Generative Community from Source
“All groups have something else, something that’s very real. We can call it ‘source’. Source is, in a sense, embodied purpose: the things that truly drive the key people in a setting, and how these drives take shape depending on the characteristics, personalities, resources, and skills of those people.” - Hanzi Freinacht
As we are enacting this evolving, embodied consciousness of divine spirit in ourselves, we are making possible more than the solely purpose-driven projections and mental strategies of even the best plans we can come up with. While generative communities may have an eye toward the future and a strong sense of vision—they are not solely focused on action plans and strategic initiatives. Because this approach to enacting purpose is fragmented and incomplete.
The most generative and impactful work of the future will be that which is flowing forth freely from Source, from our essence as divine beings imbued in the universal force of life and love that we sometimes call God.
Dedicated mystical practice is the path to the loving evolution of Christianity and the world because it is the only way that we will embody a more integrated and holistic consciousness that can access and flow from Source, be shared with meaning in a loving community, and manifest with action that is of a greater design and movement.
There we can learn together from the collective spring of deeper wisdom that is within us all, not caught up in external content of systems upon systems, piling up information without life integration and transformation.
There we can innovate together from the emergent spirit in our midst that is arising through deeply communal communication, sharing ideas and possibilities for practical and embodied expression, not theoretical or abstract discussion.
There we can collaborate through various and multiple initiatives, sharing our lessons learned—both successes and failures, which are an inevitable part of evolution.
And there we can be held in the loving relational field of deep community, finding fundamental support and care, guidance and companionship.
To not only a greater purpose and meaning in our lives, but tapped into the inherent and intrinsic value of our deepest being, being lived out in the world today, together.
Practicing Community:
What collectives and communities are you a part of? Assess their form and discern from your Source the resonance or differences in meaning and purpose that you feel drawn to with your life.
Connect deeply with your deepest source, perhaps through your womb center, invoking and welcoming the fundamental vitality and energy through which you can live and bring into your forms of community.