My Destination Community List

Today I would like to share a list of my personal communities so that you can see what I meant by last weeks' post on Destination Community. Following are my existing community groups that I do life with:
Park Community Church - 20 years of worshiping and friend & fellowship history; but, no one lives in my geographic neighborhood!
St. James School - we are newbies at the school; so, we are still getting to know folks
CCDA peeps - these are my friends that love & live Christian community development as a mission
Mission Group - this is my small group, which is a group of folks from different 'hoods & churches, committed to studying God's truth & living love to the under-resourced
Synchro Swimming - this is my daughter's sport; so, I hang with these moms twice a week
Goethe Neighbors - these are the neighbors that live on my block or in my neighborhood
Friday Soup gals - these are the ladies that come to my house for soup & gal pal fellowship every 3rd Friday
Willow prayer gals - these are gals I pray with from my Willowcreek days(20 years ago!), they know all my stuff
SoCal peeps - my dear friends from our SoCal life season
Tweet peeps - friends I keep w/Twitter & Facebook, that I check in & out with

Now, out of these groups, the first eight I meet with face-to-face on a regular basis. Six of them I drive to connect with and two of them meet in our home. I have come to find out that if members in these groups overlap, then I usually have a deeper relationship with the individuals because I spend more face-to-face community time with them. And, to me, the relationships seem richer and more authentic because of the amount of time spent together. So, for that very reason, I am praying for someone from my Park Church group to move into my geographic neighborhood. I really desire someone that I worship God with to live geographically close, in my 'hood!

The last two groups are relationships kept current, in community so-to-speak, by technology. I hear many people rag about this modern wonder(myself included!) However, I do love the connections I can keep through these incredible inventions. We spent 4 years in So. California and we have some dear friends there. Email, Facebook and Twitter allows me to stay in touch with these folks and not lose community connection with them, even though I cannot see them face-to-face... So, how do these relationship communities work in your world? Make a list and think about your time commitment, energy output and recharge input with these different types of communities. Driving to some of our Destination Communities does eat up a lot of time and energy; yet, many days we just do it and don't think about that. And, the technology-driven communities of Facebook, email, Twitter and even phone-talk time consumes hours and energy, as well. Which ones are worth it for you in building a rich, recharging community support network and which ones should you abandon?