‘Community’

Rediscovering Community: From 1990s Small Towns to Modern Micro-Communities

In the 1990s, small towns, especially in the Midwest, had a distinct sense of community deeply rooted in shared experiences and values. Churches were central to community life, serving not just as places of worship, but as hubs for social gatherings, events, and support networks. These churches were synonymous with the community, offering a strong sense of belonging and identity.

Small-town life in the 1990s was characterized by close-knit relationships and frequent community events like potlucks and fairs, fostering a spirit of cooperation and mutual support. Local institutions such as schools, businesses, and community centers provided spaces for interaction and engagement. The town's identity was often tied to its location and the presence of a single church or key institutions that anchored communal life.

As time progressed, urbanization began to reshape community landscapes. Townships expanded into cities, bringing with them diverse cultural, religious, and social dynamics. This expansion led to a more fragmented sense of community, where traditional ties gave way to a dispersed network of micro-communities.

Today, communities often take the form of micro-communities centered around specific interests and activities. Interest-based groups, such as gaming clubs and online forums, bring people together based on shared passions but can be transient and surface-level. Digital engagement through social media allows for quick connections, but these interactions can lack the depth of face-to-face relationships.

While the landscape of community has changed, the essence of what makes a community meaningful hasn't. It's about fostering genuine connections, supporting each other, and creating shared experiences. By understanding the evolution of community from the 1990s to today, we can strive to blend the best of both worlds, fostering a sense of belonging and identity in modern life.

But Have You “Experienced” Community?

I often times was the loner, the ‘anti-social’ kid at the family gatherings and church events. When I stepped back, watched, and listened to what I wasn’t supposed to hear about myself or others, it was very disparaging. That feeling wasn’t about principles at the time. No. It was about ‘fitting in,’ which :P was difficult as a chubby kid, to say the least. I was also the one who gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, no matter how often it backfired. Being useful, even as the object of ridicule or scapegoating, was the primary sense of belonging I had. Apart from that, I had nothing until the later years in youth groups - people like me, close to my age, similar interests, similar freedoms or lack thereof, resources, and familial connections.

It was within that group where I heard the best stories, had the best laughs, and experienced many great things. I guess when things are going well, you don’t realize or appreciate the goodness of the sense of belonging until it’s gone: ripped out by having to grow up, a terminal diagnosis, a catastrophic event, dismal finances - any of that is just two weeks away for most people, if even that far. Yet it’s through the discovery of friends in lowly places that you begin to once again believe that you have a community.

The common unity found among those friends made along the way is still there in part and parcel, but it’s not cohesive or deep as it used to be in the old days. It is in this way that the essence of community abides, but incongruent with changing locations, activities, experiences, and networks. The ‘small town feel’ has been lost to time, forever split between the gemeinschaft & gemeinwesen communities centered around faith and tradition (in our area, the Amish), and the aggressive, impersonal, profit-driven gesellschaft of the larger cities. This is often times where people find themselves: choosing between the sense of community found in long-established small neighborhoods or groups regardless of money, and doing without the goodness of productivity and resources of the larger cities, OR managing the money and time to commute to make more money, and get swallowed up in the rat race. True, it doesn’t happen to everyone, but it does happen to many - and it seems many simply disappear into the void measured by the dimensions of debt, loneliness, and the helter-skelter of modern life. It is in that sense that we can measure the ‘nothingness’ of modern life, pushing apart the real, visible, substantially good and productive members of society.