Hockey and the Church

For a while my father-in-law was part of the Big Brother Big Sister program. His "little brother", Aaron, is an older teenager now and has better things to do so they stepped away from the official relationship but still stay in touch.

We went to one of Aaron's hockey games today (or at least we tried to. Apparently it was the wrong time, or rink, or day or something.) There were about 30 or so people in the stands watching. Mostly parents and family it seemed. We walked up and down the glass trying to find Aaron on the ice. His mom wasn't around and it's so difficult to recognise anyone with their face behind a mask. We definitely had a confused look on our faces as we paced back and forth, sat down, got up, walked to the desk, returned to the rink and sat down again. We watched for about twenty minutes and I noticed something interesting. There was a contingent of fans for each side huddled closely together cheering for the boys. Then there were a few small clumps of people a bit distanced from the main group, and several others alone. There was even one mom sitting upstairs watching the game through glass…alone. And us, clearly confused, a bit out of place but seemingly there for a common purpose - to watch these boys slide around the ice.

I began to wonder, "Is this community?" I'm pretty sure no one would argue that all of these people are living in community together (even the fans of each respective team). But I talk to people quite often that believe they experience community every Sunday morning at a "church". They gather together with sometimes random people in a common area for a common purpose once a week and call it community. A group of people gathered together for a common cause may fall within the definition of community but it does not equal healthy community. It's just a crowd. I have spoken with pastors who believe that a Sunday morning service is an introduction to community. However, many Sunday morning church services are no different than the hockey game. Yes, there were likely people at the hockey game that were in community, but it wasn't because of the event. They were already living life together and the event was simply part of their community.

In the parts of the Western world that I know, community is not incidental. True community can only be found when we are intentional. For the purpose of this conversation, what if we considered two types of community - what I will call proximal community and profitable community. Proximal community requires very little from me and, thus, returns very little to me. It's simply a group of people gathering/living together, sometimes even with a common interest. Profitable community, on the other hand, requires a commitment and investment but returns so much more. In this community I keep the health of the others in mind; hence, everyone else in the community always considers my personal health. This is the type of community I read about in the Scriptures. This is the type of community that Jesus exhibited. This is the type of community that I'm looking for.