Not all cultures are conducive to building close communities.

I read an article in today's Straits Time about an 'ang moh' RC leader, who took up residency here in Singapore. His initial involvement in community work started back in England when he started volunteer work in his church back there.

And on the previous page, there was an article about the Venerable Shi Ming's (sp?) involvement in community work.

Think something that struck me was - regardless of their religious affiliation, or creed, or ethnic group or culture or personalities - was how they are impacting their communities within their own spheres of influence.

Think after reading these two articles, something that struck me was that both men have been involved in their communities. The key word is community. Not culture.

Why community? Because in industrialized/post-industrialized societies, one of the first things that tend to go is the extended family structure with its strongly intertwined familial relationships - e.g. tribes, clans, etc. It contracts into the socially-weaker "nuclear family", and in today's post-modern societies, we have to resort to, in Benedict Anderson's words, "imagined communities" - such is the void in our hearts for a community, a family, to belong to.

And in reading the book of Acts, I was thinking about how the early Christians impacted the people around them... it seemed to me that they essentially reached out to whoever was in their communities - be it marketplace, family, friends, prayer groups, leisure times, etc.

In Ed Silvoso's book, Anointed for Business, he writes about the transforming power of a businessman who applied Christian principles in his business, and lived a godly life... and as a result of his life, an entire town was transformed from a decaying slum into a prospering town!

This is where I'm thinking: the end outcome - a thriving community of people. A city-square full of life. Of people interacting with one another.

And. As citizens of a post-industrialized society, we have little knowledge of what a community can be like. We are ignorant. We need to be taught how to live in community.

And that's why the Church is so important to us - both Christians and the world - to show us what true community really is like. Jesus said that if we Christians loved one another, the world would know that we are His disciples. And the second greatest commandment in the Old Testament is this: "Love your neighbour as yourself." To show this, Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan - who was definitely not Jewish - helping a badly-mugged Jew back to safety.

So, after writing all this, what does it really mean?

I think we shouldn't confuse culture with community. Both are important, of course, and inevitability, a common culture can play a very important role in bringing a community together. But not all cultures are conducive to building close communities. Even in church.

You know what I mean? I'll define culture to be (roughly) as a set of common customs, manners and values shared by a particular group. And community to be (roughly) a group of people in close supportive relationships with one another. And the scope of "culture" as I mean it to be can be that of a small group of a few people, or as large as an entire nation.

So, for instance, if a culture dictates that people must always be polite with one another, and never express feelings openly or sincerely, or a culture despises any signs of weaknesses, such cultures are antithetical to the formation of a community. They are like antibiotics to a living bacterial (pardon the pun) culture - they kill off the microbial community.

And vice-versa.

So was thinking... even as I try to be culturally relevant, I need to understand WHY I seek to be so. We are called to bring God's love and community into a lost world hungry for real community. In short, I believe... Christ wants us to bring the heart of community living into our physical communities, especially the church. To love our neighbours as ourselves... literally!

"Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially the family of believers." (Galatians)

Hmm. What will really draw men to Christ?