(RNS) Film buffs must love the gone-viral video “Grand Rapids Lip Dub” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjjZCO67WI).

Even if they don’t resonate with the Michigan city’s determination to live, they recognize what one reviewer called “the Holy Grail of cinema”: an extended tracking shot. Another called this “the best music video ever made.”

In a single intricately planned shoot, filmmaker Rob Bliss moved through the streets of Grand Rapids as townsfolk lip-synched Don McLean’s 1971 rock classic “American Pie.”

He filmed people strumming guitars, getting married, turning cartwheels, playing in a park, executing a football play, kayaking down the Grand River, waving handkerchiefs from a balcony, marching in high school band uniforms, riding in a pickup truck. Residents keep moving in and out of camera range, as McLean’s slice of Americana keeps on playing. Only a few appear to be notables — like the mayor riding in a convertible. The rest — some 5,000 residents in all — are just folks who showed up for rehearsal.

This tracking shot lasts as long as “American Pie”: just more than nine minutes. It ends in a helicopter shot of downtown and words on grass: “Experience Grand Rapids.”

In its first week on YouTube, “Grand Rapids Lip Dub” has scored more than 2 million views.

I found the video deeply moving. I, too, come from a Midwestern city that’s often said to be dying. I recognized the scenes: bridges over a minor river, a revitalized red brick downtown, the workaday reality of shops, hospitals and schools.

I recognized the people: a high school band playing a marching tune, a couple kissing outside a church, young people all in one place, flames rising from fireworks on a bridge. McLean’s America is not seen as dying like the music that died when Buddy Holly’s plane crashed in 1959, but living gloriously.

In a week when I was writing about “oneness” — the one thing Jesus wanted for us, and the one thing we Christians cannot seem to let happen — this video caught the reality of community.

Community is gritty, not pretty.

Community is an accident of time and space, not a carefully selected roster of people we like or let in.

Community is everyone, not just “our kind.”

Community is all ages, all races. Community is lovers crying, poets dreaming.

Life in community is like a tracking shot: people go in and out of focus, events occur and step aside. No one owns center stage. Life keeps on happening as the camera’s eye keeps on moving.

And yet, in the camera’s eye, a firefighter is bound to newlyweds, and they to cheerleaders, and they to the tattooed good old boy, and he to a woman carrying a dog.

For too long, we have sought venues we can control, where the motley herd cannot enter. Races are kept separate while genders fight, generations fight, and the religious maintain McLean’s “sacred stores.” All the while, “Satan (is) laughing with delight.”

Christianity has been a prime force preventing oneness. We who should know better have written, not the “book of love,” but the book on division and hatred.

I think we should all watch “Grand Rapids Lip Dub” and ask: Which do we want to be? A dying nation of divided people whose “hands (are) clenched in fists of rage,” or a tracking shot of people who come outside and find the joy of singing together?

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus” and founder of the Church Wellness Project. His website is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com. Follow Tom on Twitter (at)tomehrich.)