got this quote from a blog quoting another blog. jordon cooper listed it as todd hunter's commenting on dallas willard's quotes. confused? i am. anyhow, just read-

We keep trying to make Sunday church into community with people driving to these meetings from 20-30 minutes away. We then try to fix this obvious lack of community by adding some form of home group. Now people drive 20-30 minutes to a second meeting and we fool ourselves into thinking we have created community. While striving mightily to form these pseudo-communities we lose twice: First, these meetings can never amount to true community , by definition (with the exception of cyber communities) I'm not sure about this one yet, but I'm open... has a strong geographical component. True community requires routine, unplanned contact—like what you have at work, school, neighborhood, etc. Here is the second loss: while running to meetings of this sort, and thinking of them as our Christianity, we ignore the authentic communities we are already in! We neglect the very places we could be working with God as ambassadors of the Kingdom to form (educate, grow in grace and true spirituality, grow in numbers as new Followers of Christ are added, etc.). [more thougths on todd's blog at todd's blog

some interesting thoughts. i have asked some of the same questions. what is even more sad is that in some ways i feel a greater sense of community with my unsaved neighbors than i do with believers. the upside is that i feel in a real sense that we are living out the salt and light thing in our neighborhood. i think that the whole cocooning effect is having more of an impact than we think. proximity=simplicity=community. hmmmmm