Reading about community in Mark Driscoll's book.
"...This new community of transformed people, called the church, should be patterned after the one true God, who eternally exists as a Trinitarian community of Father, Son and Spirit. God made men and women in his image and likeness, which means, in part, that we too were made for friendships and community. It explains why God told our father Adam that it was not good for him to be alone, though both he and his environment were perfect...we have all been born into a world in which we long for gracious, joyous, and endless friendship and community but find this longing unsatisfied because of the sin that separates us from friendship wiht God and one another...
...In his book
Bowling Alone, Harvard professor Robert Putnam explains this phenonmenon by showing that our world is arranged by various sorts of capital... Social Capital includes the friends, acquaintances, coworkers, family members and other relationships that form a web of trust and reciprocity...basically this means that I do something nice to help you because we ahve some type of relationship, with the understanding that, later on, you will help me when I need it, because I've made a deposit into our invisible social-capital account..."
He then goes on to say how this Social Capital based community is declining.
"The decline in our nation's social capital inevitably reduces all of life to a transaction-based culture in which the only way you can get anyone to help you is to pay them. So if you are lonely and want someone to speak to, you may have to pay a counselor. If you can't pick up your dry cleaning, you may have to hire a personal assistant. If you want to work out with someone, you may have to hire a personal trainer. And if you car breaks down, you may have to call a cab--rather than a neighbor--to pick you up.
Many people are lonely and lack the community gathering points in which they can make meaningful human contacts. the following statistics demonstrate this altering of our relational landscape in the past twenty-five years.
* Playing cards as a social activity is down 25%.
*Frequenting bars, nightclubs, and taverns is down 40%
*The number of full-service restaurants has decreased 25%, and the number of bars (including coffee bars) and luncheonettes has decreased 50%, but the number of fast-food outlets has increased 100%, as more people eat alone and eat more meals in their cars.
*Having a social evening with someone from one's neighborhood is down 33%
*Attending social clubs and meetings is down 58%
*Family dinners are down 33%
*Having friends over to one's home is down 45%
*From 1980 to 1993, participation in America's number one participant sport, bowling, was up 10 percent, but the nujmber of bowling leagues decreased 40 percent, as more people bowled alone.
*From 1985 to 1999, the rediness of the average American to make new friends declined by nearly 33%"
