J.R. Briggs

The magnetism of healthy community

March 8, 2010

I’m re-reading Jean Vanier’s Community and Growth – the second-best book I’ve ever read on the concept of community (Bonhoeffer’s Life Together takes the cake).  Vanier started the L’Arche communities around the world, homes that minister to and live among those with handicaps and disabilities. The L’Arche community in Toronto is the basis for much of Henri Nouwen’s experiences in his books. His perspective on community is rich with wisdom, humility and experience. (Click here to read more about Vanier and Nouwen.)

Here’s an excerpt from his section titled “Signs of Sickness and Health in Community” (emphasis in bold in the quotation below is mine).

“When a community is healthy, it acts like a magnet. Young people commit themselves; visitors are happy to come there. When a community starts to be frightened of welcoming visitors and new people, when it starts to lay down so many restrictions and ask for so many guarantees that practically no one qualifies to come, when it starts to reject its own weakest and most difficult members – the old and the sick – these are bad signs. Then it is no longer a community; it is becoming an efficient place of work.

“It’s a bad sign too when a community tries to structure itself to ensure total security for the future, when it has a lot of money in the bank. Gradually, it will eliminate all possible risk. It will no longer need God’s help. It will cease to be poor.

The health of a community can be measured by the quality of its welcome of the unexpected visitor or someone who is poor, by the joy and simplicity of relationships between its members, by its creativity in response to the cry of the poor. But it is measured above all by the ardor for and fidelity to its own essential goals: its presence to God and the poor.“ (143).

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