Alastair McCollum, August 2004

Being Community

Over the past few weeks I have been to quite a number of fetes on our Parishes, as well as social evenings, fundraising events and various happenings around. It's been great fun - albeit a little frustrating when the bad weather has yet again appeared on these various occasions.

And as I travel around our Parishes I am struck by the hard work and the dedication of many who give time, effort and care to make sure these events happen - not just to raise money (though that's an important part of many of these events) but to bring people together and enjoy the fact that in our villages we still have the potential to be Communities.

To be honest, there's not really a lot of community around these days - many of us don't know our neighbours, or many in our villages, few of us go to Church with any regularity, plenty of people are out at work all day and away from the weekends. Some of our villages are empty most of the time, and even though I travel more than most between the Parishes, there are plenty of faces I don't recognise as I go around.

Yet in these villages we do still have the advantage of being able to get to know our neighbours, and being able to make community. Our Churches seek to offer something of that, as we bring people together. St Paul thought it was so important to meet together as Christians that he said that we are all `one body' and that when one suffers all suffer, we all - he said - belong to each other..

It is not only in our Churches, though, that we seek to make community - our local Social Clubs, Schools, Village Pubs, Village Halls are all there to offer us places to be together, to meet one another, to be a part of something quite precious and rare in our modern world - to be a part of a community.

It does take work - as those who run our fetes and events and social activities will tell you. And it means that we have to get out of our houses, leave behind our TVs, PS2s or whatever and make the effort to be with others. It means joining in, and sometimes offering ourselves to help others. But in the end it is the same for our Churches, Social Clubs, Shops, Pubs and any institutions - if we don't make the most of them, they will go, and it is often only when they've gone we realise how much we need them. Use it or lose it, as they say. And thank you to all those who work so hard to keep things going.