How do our personal failures affect our community?

By Travis Jones

Community¹ brokenness happens when the various aspects of a given community are not functioning properly. This involves isolation, poverty, crime, unemployment, broken familial relationships, and so on.

Community brokenness is something that every community deals with in one way or another. It is the natural outcome of individuals within a community dealing with their own personal brokenness and then living together in a community where each person has an impact on the other.

As humans, we are created in the image of God, who, being triune, has always existed in relationship, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Since we are made in His image, we are made as relational beings who naturally engage in social relationships with one another.

As it relates to our 4 fundamental relationships, the building blocks for all of life², community brokenness is a break in the relationships between ourselves, others, and the rest of creation. All communities face this brokenness, some more prominently than others, some more secretly than others. The question is not whether or not a community deals with brokenness, but how they are affected by it and how they address such brokenness.

Community brokenness is abstract and in some sense, it is both the root and the symptoms of poverty. Poor education, low resources, high crime, and so on, are caused by community brokenness. Yet, community brokenness is also further compounded by these things. It is a dangerous downward cycle resulting in further harm for all within and affected by the community.

As we discuss community brokenness this year, consider what ways your geographic community (neighborhood) experiences brokenness.

• How do you see this brokenness represented?
• What is the root of that brokenness?
• Is it simply just a lack of people knowing the Gospel, or is there something more to it?
• What would it mean if everyone in your community heard the Gospel and accepted Christ?

¹By community, I am referring to a geographic area in which people live, work, play, shop, etc.

²Bryant L. Myers, Walking with the Poor.