Community Is Made From Two Words

The buzz phrase for the bloggers and online marketeers today is ‘community’, and has become the poster child for all things involving social media (a.k.a Facebook, to the average user). This, essentially, means for most of them: ‘create’ a community around what you want people to talk about. Church communities are actually great models of what community really is. And for those who have not had that experience, let me suggest that the word community is made up from two words:

Com – from the Latin communis, which means ‘common’, or ‘shared’

Unity – the state of being united, or one

Community, therefore, is a group of people who are united by something they share in common. You cannot have a community without both elements: without the common element, you just have a group; without unity, you just have individuals who share something in common.

The real question for community builders online is this: what do the people in your community have in common, and what is uniting them?