Community is driven by mutual bonds of genuine love and purpose. It rises up toward a specific end and is held together by a passionate drive to achieve that end.

Love, purpose and passion are the engines of community and they need to be fed. If you starve even one the others die. The community will continue for quite a while under the momentum of these three but eventually over the years or decades or centuries it will break down.

The nature of the community will be determined by what it loves, it’s perceived purpose and the theme of its passion…again each affects the other.

The community is what it loves. Where it’s passion is and what it’s purpose is. The community is never what it says it is or even thinks it is – it is defined only by how it acts these three out.

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:22, 23 NIV)