The frontier, except for the interior one, is done and gone. The benefits of community should be obvious. Most of us, I daresay, could not get along without it. Think only of your pantry, for instance. We need one another in more ways than we know.
True hermits are few and far between.
We long for love, and too often we don't get enough of it. Welcoming new members into our church always provides a wonderful opportunity and context to reconsider the meaning of community. What we are trying to create here, we say, is a beloved community. Not that we will all like each other all, or even some, of the time. Some of us won't like each other at all.