Paul Turley
The Spire Community, Clayton Wesley Uniting Church and Uniting Communities working together. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s the way we want to think about all of the things we do here together. Hope’s Café, Goodies Op Shop, the Spire Community Garden, In The Same Boat, the Sunday Morning Congregation, and lots of other programs and projects make up the Spire Community. It’s us all working together to be “a dynamic community in which all people may participate and flourish,” that’s our vision.
The best way to think about the Spire Community is that it is us. If you took all of the volunteers, customers and guests out of these buildings and programs, not much would be left except a few chairs, some clothes hanging on racks, some growing vegetables, a church building and a kitchen.
None of these make community. They are useful tools that can help us but it’s us, ordinary women and men, who do the community building and we do it by the way we interact with each other, the way we think about each other as friends and the way we work, respecting, honouring and valuing each other. We all have something to bring to the work of community building. We bring our skills and our insights, we bring our willingness to work and contribute, but best of all we bring our unique selves and the expectation that others will bring their unique selves.
To do that, we have to get organised a bit. There are health and safety and other regulations that we must meet, and there are systems we must develop and modify to make sure we are working together as well as we can, but the best work we do is when we are caring for each other, respecting each other, welcoming each other and together building community.
Right now, some of us are working on grant proposals to help us upgrade the kitchen and some of our furniture in Hope’s Hall. We think it will help us do better what we do and even do more. If you have ideas, join us in the ongoing conversation about how we build community together.
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INSPIRE / October 20163