Notes and research for discussion
How do you start a community?
How do you generate a friendship? A community is a group of friends with a shared vision, goal, dream. People who come to our church who don’t share our goals, but are still friends with people who do, and don’t feel isolated or pressured because they don’t share those values. The foundation is love, friendship, sharing, and common grace.
I realized I was basically trying to create a church because a Christian community in a sense is a church. And I didn’t really want to create a church. So I narrowed it down to be targeted for church-goers seeking to be connected on a better level with their current community. Better as in, past the superficial how-are-yous and profile info.
What is a scheme for building community through a certain avenue?
I can use the combination of technology and actual human interaction—a service design that stands into real physical meet-ups and there’s something that joins them together from a technological stand point.
What is the difference between communities today, and communities 200 years ago? Because before, it was your religious community, you were a part of it, and you had no choice.
It was non-natural in ancient and medieval times. Men and women had particular roles because they had to. And automatically that’s all they talked about: their hunts, battles, dangers, hardships, etc.
Clay Shirkey says that life has gotten to the point where the affects of the internet are now becoming broadly social enough that there is a general awareness that the internet isn’t a decoration on contemporary society, but a challenge to it. A network is natively good at group forming, and the change in our historical generation is that group action just got easier—it actually engages groups. The more people, the more connections. Even if it’s as little as 5 people, there are 10 connections. If there are 10 people, there are 45 connections and everybody is talking to everybody.
Now you can share and then aggregate. You can discover who you have common with, only after you do your own work. At this parade the photographers eventually met. It wasn’t about being coordinated in advanced, but discovering one another and then started sharing; sharing is a platform and is changing the media world. For example: Flickr has created a world of sharing and conversation, as well as growing together and getting better together. There’s a residue of instruction. There are also forums where you common and there are no threads, your comment just goes to the top and that’s the whole thing—it’s just one whole conversation.
What is the difference between Christian community and a regular community? (and how can I take both factors and make a service design out of it to help people discover a community? Are there things that you get from one but not the other?)
The aspects of community is not just about you, it’s always about a group; it’s communal. There’s an instruction for life, and one anotherness. In the context of a Christian community it’s about affirming the strengths, equal importance, affection; sharing the time, need and problems; and serving one another by accountability, forgiveness and reconciliation, and serving one’s interests rather than your own. The members of the community aren’t in it for what they can get, but they’re in it because of what they receive, which is grace. There are no real requirements to “get an entrance” other than if you are somewhat Christian. We all have a common sense of brokenness, neediness, helplessness; humility. Most of the time in other places, you get in because you’re competent, gifted or successful.
The external events and activities through which we bond and spend time together may be similar, but in a Christian community, your foundation is in something that is not of yourself (in our case, God). So our interactions, conversations, and the way we care for one another is driven by God’s love and not by our own competence of how much we can give to one another or what we can do for another. So instead of finding things in common among ourselves to form connections through we don’t have to have everything in common to connect, or something that we are doing to please the other person. Of course in other communities, people don’t have to all like the same thing, if they ‘connect’ well, but I think in another way in a Christian community (we would hope) that even when we don’t “feel” like being a part of it, or we don’t seem like we should belong, we are a part of it and we belong because of God’s grace and love, and the other members of the community know that so they love and accept you.
He has wired us uniquely and placed us uniquely to be all we need corporately to grow into the fullness of Jesus Christ, which means he has given us specific gifts and abilities—which collide, and we all bring what we bring to the body, and that helps us all mature into all Christ has for us in the gospel. We're to serve one another, love one another, and walk with one another.
Once we were not a people, and now we are a people. The gospel has formed a completely different people than we once were. How we're defined now is: you and I, regardless of background, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, have become a new people, a people belonging to God, a people of his own possession.
This is why I want to bring people together—It withdraws people from a collective “togetherness” and solitude amongst one another. People bring different gifts and parts of their personality to the table, leading to people bringing out different parts of others. A person on their own is not large enough to have a whole activity. There’s also this other idea that in a way, you have less of a person if the other person is not there to ignite a feeling or gesture. The more people, the more who will augment their loves, the more uniqueness and different visions come. “The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”
A forum is good because it won’t set a limit to an enlargement of a circle or have any consideration with the size of a room or audibility of voices.
A profile can be good because there can be the expression of the opening of a friendship, which is the reaction of, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one!”
Is there a community that can grow from this place of where I really care about? That seeks to remove the stuff that I don’t want (judgementalism, ignorance, gossiping). Can I create a community version of that poster that I wanted to create in the first place of saying you are loved?
There can be a problem with social media because it can easily lead to depression and obsession of popularity—but maybe having a profile page can help people feel liked. There’s this idea that there is something about you, and people find interest in it; it’s a validating experience.
CGs are good about siting down and talking together, but there’s a limit to how people can connect. At hangouts it’s easier to be more natural and see how people are. An open shared experience flows better than sit-down conversations for some people.
[Feeling more deeply connected to current community]
I've got this issue of community, but I also got this vision of positive aspects, and it’s these positive things that you want to keep and hold together—that’s what communities should grow from.
Social network sites, or even dating sites are exciting in the sense of being able to get to know people around the area and look forward to chatting. The emotional rush of having something to look forward to when you go onto your computer.
What are the things that hold you together?
In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others. Those are the golden sessions;
Why do the unconnected feel this way? How is the community failing them?
Because sometimes people spend more time amongst one another, according to their proximity or time—so when you try to go into a group, it’s awkward and you can feel it.
What do all these features mean?
All who share this same belief and vision will be your companions, but one or two or three who share something more will be your friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson said, “Do you love me?” it means “Do you see the same truth?” or “Do you care about the same truth?” So people who simply want friends can never make any. They don’t see the same truth as someone, they just want a friend. There would be nothing for the friendship to be about.
What fellowship does for you and to you?
In a very practical sense, it reminds me that I am not alone—that I live life with people I love and who love me. It reminds me of God’s presence in my life, and encourages me to press on through my days. It basically helps me enjoy life.
If a community is made up of how we identify—are there ways you can communicate two individuals within a community without having them to be in a location? Technology and advertising can provide that. Can we take advantage of all the media, and you as a designer, take advantage to remind people they are a part of a community (that’s important to you)?
How can those properties be extended, replaced, modified by digital community to be innovative and appropriate?
What is the experience in real life and what could be translated/augmented digitally?
