Community Value is value for human beings for who they are in life.
No quality of buildings, yards, commercial offerings or quantity of collected wealth can match it.
No individual achievements, accumulations or assets can equal it.
Living within the same general geographical area does not make us neighbors.
It does not make community. Nice houses and businesses, perfectly manicured yards and matching houses does not make community.
Community is people. It is people coming together. Ideally, it is people of very different ethnicities, backgrounds, faith practices, economic classes, sexual orientations and ages coming together. It is folk coming together around their commonalities, choosing to stay and work and live together and striving to benefit, not just themselves but everyone in the community. Homeless, deeply religious folk, gay/lesbian couples, young families with children, elders on fixed income, working poor and upper middle class folk coming together to benefit one another lifts everyone up. It lifts peoples' souls. It blesses everyone equally. It is an arena in which we are challenged to raise our level of human development.
Segregation based on any of these differences hurts individuals, kills community and hurts especially those who are "ghetto-ized" in poor neighborhoods that get abandoned by city officials and services. The coming together of people and the working together of people makes for healthy communities, healthy families, schools and healthy individuals.
Community is the value to which we aspire and toward which we will work.
Pastor Jamie
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