Today, many churches have a focus on Sunday mornings.  They have great worship bands and well planned sermons.  What many churches are forgetting though is just as important.  The church is supposed to be a community of believers coming together in fellowship to worship together and grow in their relationship with God and with each other. 

Small groups are a great way to build community, but in my opinion they do not go far enough.  Even with a good network of small groups you can end up with just a bunch of groups of 10 people that know each other but still are not that connected with the rest of the church. 

One important thing to realize is that you can not force people to get involved and get to know each other.  But as a church we need to provide ample opportunities for people to connect.  Here are a few ideas:

Eat together:  Have times as a church where you get together to share a meal.  Set up tables that are large enough that people will be sitting next to other people they may not know.

Play together:  Have a recreational day where people come together and play games and just hang out.

Serve together:  It is important for churches to serve their communities.  This means a lot more than have a service where people come to you, this means getting out and actively doing things to help people.  Imagine if the entire church went out to serve together?  What would happen if once a month, instead of doing your normal worship service, the church body went out and served?  That would change your city, people would see your church living like Christ wanted us to live.  It would also bring your church body closer together and build up your church community.