There is nothing that hurts a child more than
being left out. There is no fear bigger for any child than to be on a playground with no one to play
with. One of the first concepts a child learns is that of “me too!” A need for
belonging is something basic inside each one of us. According to the Canadian
Mental Health Association, a sense of belonging is one of a child’s fundamental
needs, and it must be cultivated to ensure a balanced and healthy experience
outside the family. (Canadian Mental Health Association)
Our modern society in North America is moving
away from our family and community oriented roots. It used to be that you could
sit on your front porch and chat with your neighbors. You knew who they were,
where they worked, who their extended family was and even their schedule. They
knew you, too, and you were a part of the neighborhood, which meant something.
Your parents lived in the same town and your children saw their grandparents most
days.
Now, knowing your neighbor is a rarity. Your
neighbor moves away and you don’t say goodbye because you never said hello.
Grandparents live clear across the continent from their grandchildren. Our communication has moved
from face-to-face over the fence to text messaging across the city and Email around the globe.
There is no reason to get to know the people right next to you because you have
continuous access to those far from you. Children grow up these days with cell
phones, text messaging and emailing. They live in a world where predators don’t
have to find them in a schoolyard anymore; they find them on line when we think
they are safe in their bedrooms.
So what community do we belong to today? There
is the national community, the country to which we belong. We are American,
Canadian, British or Ghanaian or Mexican, etc. There is the regional community,
where we might identify ourselves as coming from the west coast, the prairies,
the south, etc. There is the metropolitan community, where we might identify
ourselves as from a particular city like Toronto or Cincinnati. We reside in a
city neighborhood or a suburban town, each of which has a certain reputation or
social standing or historic identity. But at the end of the day, we still don’t
know our neighbors. The need to belong to a community still exists, however. It
is a powerful human urge.
Ryan Messmore suggests that young adults are
searching for a sense of community and place to belong and are turning to the
government to fill that need, looking for programs and policies to create
community instead of relying on natural association between neighbors and
people who meet. (Messmore)
Children are searching to fill this need through
online gaming and chat rooms where they can be a part of a social network. The
dangers of these social networks are numerous, yet surprisingly a social
networking survey revealed that 49 percent of children ages eight through 17
have an online profile. Compare that to the 22 percent of people age 16 and
over who have online profiles, and you can see exactly where our society is
headed. (Waters) Yet the online
community that draws so many youngsters sometimes doesn’t even introduce people
using their real names, let alone the same physical room. There is still a
distance.
Adults also look for communities to belong in.
They increasingly identify themselves with the workplace instead of the home.
When the majority of your day is spent at work, including overtime hours and
weekend days spent at the office, is it any surprise that families are not as
strong as they used to be? However, it is no longer financially feasible for
many families to have one parent stay at home with the children. Two incomes
are now the norm, and to keep up with an average standard of living, both
parents work outside the home. Gone are the days when one income could cover
the mortgage, the car and the raising of four or five children! So when the
majority of an adult’s time is spent in workplace, it is natural for them to
identify themselves primarily in their professional role instead of primarily
as a member of a family or a community.
One of the most successful businesses in North
America today is Starbucks, the coffee company with a sense of community.
Starbucks makes its money by creating franchises that look like little
community coffee shops. The employees are encouraged to know their customer’s
favorite coffee. The décor encourages the patrons to sit and stay a while. Why
would someone pay $5 for a coffee? Because Starbucks doesn’t only sell coffee,
they sell a sense of community. Starbucks is making a mint because they figured
out what people want most, somewhere to belong, not just a hot drink.
(Starbucks)
So what is left of the good old days of
community, porch swings and a neighborly chat over the fence? Are we left with
Starbucks, the trademarked corporation? No, there is one last vestige of times
gone by. We still have the church. The church used to be center of social life
in North America. People attended every week, and even midweek! It was where they
met their friends and where they came together to help the less fortunate in their
community. A person could be born into a church, get married there, bring one’s
children to be blessed and then be buried in the graveyard outside; their
entire lives lived in one congregation. But haven’t churches changed, too?
It is true that times change whether we like it
or not. Even churches change. But while the times have changed and the methods
used in some churches have changed, the church remains an intentional
community. Members make an effort to get to know each other, even if they
probably would never meet outside the church doors. An organized church might
not be a spontaneous community, but it does offer the ties of community, a
place to bring together people across social boundaries, where they can share
their joys and sorrows, and where you can always find someone to help you move.
An intentional community is somewhere people can
belong. They contribute their time and their skills to the unit as a whole, and
it is when they are needed that they feel they truly belong. As was pointed out
by José Ortega y Gasset, “people do not live together merely to be together.
They live together to do something together.” (Nisbet, p. 54) We all have the
need to belong and to contribute. We all have the need to join in efforts to achieve
common goals. The need for the church has not changed with the times. People have
just forgotten that they need it!
No comments:
Post a Comment