Is community 'it'?

I've nearly finished reading a book called 'The Forgotten Ways' by Alan Hirsch, and it's about "reactivating the missional church". Honestly, it's been messing with my mind and challenging how I think about a lot of stuff. I thought I'd share this short idea from the book about community.

Two different kinds of community

1. "the community for me" - the settled experience of a group of people that exists for its own benefits and for the "insiders". Its energies are primarily directed inward

2. "me for the community and the community for the world" - the journey of a group of people that find each other only in a common pursuit of a vision and of a mission that lies beyond itself. Its energies are directed primarily outward and forward.

I think you can quite clearly see that most of the time in the Western Church we've gone for number 1. However, that is clearly not the role of the community of believers. I personally have been kinda 'in love' with the idea of community, but it is the pursuit of a shared vision and a shared mission that creates the deep relationships that should make up a community.

So yeah, this is just for you to have a think about.