> those things tend to be interest, activity, or goal based. I think that's a more significant distinction than it might appear, mainly because it seems to imp

> those things tend to be interest, activity, or goal based. I think that's a more significant distinction than it might appear, mainly because it seems to imply a narrower and more disjoint view of community than you might expect from an institution like a Church (or Synagogue, Mosque, etc.) Just to illustrate, the church I attend has the usual Sunday services, and it's explicitly a whole-family affair. This includes the kids, for which there are age appropriate breakouts during the service. There's also a breakout of sorts for people with special concerns around illness, death, and other particular needs. After the service, there's another community coffee-hour/lunch of sorts where people get together and are just able to hang out a bit. The kids usually wind up on the playground. There's also a deliberate program after the service to physically reach out to people that were unable to attend due to illness or infirmity. This is not to mention the monthly 'everyone invited' community dinners, the quarterly hosting of several homeless families on church grounds, the food pantry run by the church several times a week... Setting aside the religiosity of it all, the point I'm trying to make is that the organization goes out of its way to be inclusive in a relevant way to a wide spectrum of the community. There's explicitly something for the young, the old, the infirm, people that aren't members of the church... It's harder to see how the more goal-oriented organizations you mention can really address that broad a definition of 'community'. I get how you can use a portfolio of involvement in those groups to get everybody in a family involved in something, but not necessarily how they'd be involved _together_.... which is important. For whatever it's worth, I can easily see how something like this _could_ be assembled outside of religion.... I'm just hard pressed to point out examples where's it's actually happening at all (much less in a way that would compensate for the losses in religious institutions.)