I have loved the word “community” and I never thought I would get tired of the concept. It’s a word that encapsulates so much of what I believe about the best kind of life and living. The concept has pushed me across boundaries into other people’s lives and has prompted me to reach out and invite people into mine. I’ve thrown the word around in sermons and I’ve encouraged members of congregations to embrace the community that surrounds them. But I now find myself tired of the word.
Perhaps it’s because my current congregation, which is made up almost entirely of 18-22 year old students so often use the word to declare what is not rather than what is. “I just want to be a part of a real community.” or “I wish people wanted to create real community.” When I ask them what they are looking for they detail a beautiful picture. Community is a group of people who care about each other, who are present in each other’s lives, who share resources with one another and who always give one another the benefit of the doubt. It is a beautiful picture that I wish were real.
So many people long for this kind of community and yet so few people seem to find it. And so recently I’ve been using a significant amount of my brain space contemplating why real community is so elusive. My first big revelation occurred around a conversation concerning a student who had come declaring that a group of fellow leaders had not invited her to be a part of their community. She felt left out, ostracized and uninvited. During the conversation there were several hypothesis about why the exclusion had occurred. Perhaps she was intimidating or they were jealous of her. Perhaps it was because of her race or her gender. Perhaps they disagreed with her point of view or her politics. Toward the end of the conversation a simple question was posed to her. “Do you know the names of the people in your leadership group?” She could name only two of the thirteen.
I felt like I was on to something. In the following week I began to dig deeper into my students’ view of community and although the scenarios were all very different the core of the comments were the same. Somewhere along the way it appears that community became something to consume rather than something to create, something that was offered to rather than something to be invested in. It began to be clear that there is an idea that communities exist for the sake of the individual seeking them and therefore communities have become just one more thing to consume. Community was a gift for the one who needed to be cared for, to acquire resources, and to be heard. Community was an entity where an individual could be known and loved, oddly it was not often considered that the sustaining of the community would require that you would know and love others as well.
Somewhere along the way the idea that community requires commitment over time and outside comfort zones has gotten buried under the idea that there are communities that magically appear or are magically sustained. I’m tired of the word community because it is so often thrown around without being attached to the word commitment. The creation of community requires work and no one truly experiences it without a commitment to be the community they want to experience. To be known we must know. To be included we must include. To be heard we must hear. To be protected we must protect. To be supported we must support. To find a friend we must be one.
