Keeping People Who Make a Difference!
As the Church takes additional responsibility for local economic growth, continuity in the community is a major issue.
How does your community stack up in this area? Does the community concern itself with keeping its strong core of leadership and service for an extended period of time?
___/___ Continuity in Community
Definition: The community structures that work stay in place long enough to be productive. People want and need to see the results of their labors. If the community is changing groups, there is enough continuity in place to see that positive values are supported. Clergy and lay leadership are left in place long enough to establish programs, see results and be supported for their efforts.
Biblical Background: Psalm 125
The nation Israel has been a study in continuity and lack of continuity for around four thousand years. When Abraham left the area which we know as Iraq with his people, they left continuity behind. No one know how long their ancestors had lived in that area.
They were settled in the area with established homes, institutions, businesses and culture. By leaving the area, they left all their community support behind. Poverty, social disruption, war, hunger and early death were likely.
However, Israel took with them the covenant Abraham had made with Yahweh. This was the basic continuity they needed in order to eventually build a new society. As long as Yahweh was close at hand, the people would prosper. Continuity was set in the Creator.
But the whole of the Scriptures is the tension between the continuity of the past and the hopeful vision of the future. This struggle is lived out in the presence of the Lord. That presence especially was known in the Covenant. That Covenant power was their continuity. Without that, however, all apparently would have been lost.
When the Hebrews were in captivity in Babylon, the priests and other leaders fortunately felt the need to salvage their covenant faith from the destruction of the exhile. They told anew the stories and reinforced the theology of their past. This enabled the community to not only survive but to provide a stable faith for their descendants, us.
Mora County, New Mexico, has been a place of refuge and restart for various peoples for hundreds of years. Nation after nation of early Americans came into the area from Alaska, Europe, Africa or eastern North America. By the time they reached Mora they had been pursued from place to place across the nation.
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