Get out there and get to know your community

Last week after a beautiful dinner downtown, my bride and I decided to go for a stroll along the lakefront. Thirty years ago, I vowed I would never lose my sense of wonder at living in a place so beautiful, but I confess it’s a vow I’ve not always kept. Last week, it was back.

Our walk took us near the Island Stage and a concert by the Canadian Brass I was unaware was occurring. Wow. What an event! From my perspective, several thousand people were seated on the hillside enjoying the music.

Of particular interest to me was the diversity of the crowd. Young, old, white, brown, black. Distinctions didn’t matter. All were seated in one community, sharing an enjoyable moment, together.

It made me so proud to be part of our little city.

Community is so much more than sharing a similar postal code. Community is sharing life.

Back in the 1970s, author Frederich Buechner described community as part of the Kingdom of Heaven. He drove to the heart of community in the words of his fictional character, Leo Bebb, a straight-shooting clergyman with a shady past.

“He said, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like a great feast. That’s the way of it. The Kingdom of Heaven is a love feast where nobody’s a stranger. Like right here. There’s strangers everywhere else you can think of. There’s strangers was born twin brothers out of the same womb. There’s strangers was raised together in the same town and worked side by side all their life through. There’s strangers got married and been climbing in and out of the same fourposter 35, 40 years, and they’re strangers still. And Jesus, it’s like most of the time, he is a stranger too. But here in this place there’s no strangers, and Jesus, he isn’t a stranger either. The Kingdom of Heaven’s like this.’”

Buechner’s picture of a place where there are no strangers, and where Jesus is no stranger, is worth giving ourselves to.

That place won’t come about because of a “political correctness” agenda forced on us. It won’t happen because group after group demands and receives special rights, to the extent that nearly everyone is afraid to say or do anything out of fear they might offend someone. It won’t happen because governments legislate it or lobby groups insist on it.

It will happen when get to know our neighbours personally and learn to “love our neighbour as ourselves,” and to treat others the way we would want them to treat us.

In short, it will happen when we treat people the way Jesus treated them and the way he asked us to.

Most churches, service clubs or governments have imbedded in their mission statements a clause that suggests they want to change the world.

I identify more with the bumper sticker that says, “You Want To Change The World? Use Your Signal Light.”

If you want to change the world, the best place to start is by getting to know your neighbours, especially the neighbours who are least like you.

If you are young, invite the elderly couple three houses down to come over for a glass of lemonade in a lawn chair in your driveway.

If you’re elderly, ask the teenager two doors over, whose music in his car rattles your windows every time he comes home, if he’d like a cold glass of coke while you ask about the music group he seems to like so much.

Who knows, whatever it is that’s brewing in Kelowna today will ferment into an even sweeter vintage of community.

Tim Schroeder is a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church.