“Community is defined as a network of people who regularly come together for some common cause or celebration ”

Community is defined as “a network of people who regularly come together for some common cause or celebration (Condeluci, 2002).” A community is not necessarily geographic, although geography can define certain communities. To come to an understanding of community is to appreciate that community is based on the relationships that form, not on the space utilized. In fact, space can be an abstract notion when it comes to understanding community. Think about the global community created by the Internet. These communities are not bound by geography, but rather are relationships formed in cyberspace.

The term “community” is the blending of the prefix “com,” which means “with,” and the root word “unity,” which means togetherness and connectedness. The notion of being ‘with unity” is a good way to think about the concept of community. When people come together for the sake of a unified position of theme, you have community.

Think now about communities in your life. All of us have a number of groups that meet the definition of community. Our families, for example, are a good framework for understanding community. These are people with whom we spend a great deal of time on common themes.

To help us just a bit more in understanding community, consider another definition of community from Robert Bellah (1985): “A community is a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and production, and who share certain practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it.” Both of these definitions give us a solid start in thinking about communities in our lives.

Using the definitions of community, spend some time now identifying these groups in your life.