My friend shifted uncomfortably in her chair. The occasion was a gathering of Gen-X evangelically minded Christians sharing an evening of conversation about faith. She had never met the people sitting next to her. Two days later she had a similar experience at her first session of a Bible study for young moms. The icebreaker question: “How has having a toddler changed your relationship with your husband?”

“It felt like kissing on the first date,” she said to me later. “I wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy, just like I wasn’t ready to go through communion-like motions with a group of strangers.” Yet many people were willing to do just that: As she said, “It’s amazing how desperate for community our generation is.”

CALLED TO COMMUNITY?

Community is a big buzzword in Christian circles. Recently, Moody Bible Institute titled their yearly conference simply “Community:” Nothing more needed to get people’s attention. A search on Christianbook.com turns up 240 items with the word community in the title — compare that to only 133 with the word sex and you know you’re on to something. The titles include Created for Community, Building Loving Christian Community, and Beyond Small Groups to Authentic Community.

This longing for community isn’t new. My parents were searching for it back in the 80s. When I was in fourth grade, we moved to “Wooden Bridge Christian Community” in rural Wisconsin, sharing property with a Catholic and liberally Mennonite family. A few years later, a conservative Mennonite and two Baptist families joined us.

I loved it. It felt like I had 10 cousins and a bunch of aunts and uncles always available. (When the conservative Mennonite family of 12 joined, the number of buddies doubled). We shared baking supplies when someone ran out; we shared Sunday morning home-church worship times followed by “community meal;” we shared rides to school and multi-night sleepovers on weekends.

We did not share housing or income like many Christian communities do. There was no formal leadership, though strong personalities tended to dominate. We just lived next to each other and worked through the joys and struggles that resulted.

Fifteen years later, Wooden Bridge still exists, but in a different form. Half the children are grown and starting their own lives elsewhere. Two families have left due to irreconcilable theological differences.

Because I grew up in a community — instead of longing for one — my perspectives on the subject aren’t as idealistic as some (and believe me, I am prone to idealism). But I am grateful for what my parents gave me.

BEHIND THE LONGING

When my husband first started corresponding with me, he thought we didn’t have a future together when I told him I had grown up in an intentional community and wanted that in my life. Sam is not communally inclined. I chalk it up to his personality, which, on the Introvert to Extrovert spectrum, is somewhere past Eeyore. (When you’re naturally drained by people, the thought of living in close contact with anyone outside of the love of your life and your children gives you hives.)

That’s one factor in the longing for community: personality. Extroverts tend to be drawn to the idea; introverts not so much, although they can still be caught up in the idealism. But more than personality, modern life seems to be at the root. Technological changes have caused society to fracture. We no longer live next to our second-cousins-twice-removed in the land of our ancestors — we might move across the United States five or more times before we turn 18. Forming deep friendships requires time, stability and proximity; our rootless lifestyles have given us a collective sense of displacement.

A lot of people are drawn to communities — whether churches, university groups, missions, or actual communes — for the wrong reasons. Some want to become leaders and control others (though they usually aren’t aware of it). Others think community will solve their financial or marital difficulties. Many have personal identity issues they need to work through before joining — issues such as the need to save people, the need to be seen as giving or the need to be affirmed by others.

Community can become a placebo for dealing with these issues. Often a person channels his energies into creating external utopia in an effort to run from his inner confusion. Then, ironically, the quest for community results in the neglect of spiritual and family life. Community is good, but the home is the primary community, the primary ministry. If your soul, spouse and children aren’t given the attention they need, community on a wider scale will inevitably disintegrate.

BEYOND THE NEED

I’ve experienced unhealthy pressure to create community, both in churches I’ve attended, and at Christian campus groups in college. The expectations — to attend every possible function of the group, to bare your soul in the form of “testimony,” to become close to people you might not be naturally drawn to — were a means of forcing community, rather than letting it flower naturally.

As a result, I’ve gotten a lot more cautious. I’ve learned how to be “in” a group without being “of” it. Intimacy is power, and it’s important to be careful about who you let into the intimate sphere of your life. Just like it’s not a ministry to hang out with people you don’t like, or date someone you aren’t attracted to, it’s not healthy to intimately share your life with individuals, families or groups you just don’t vibe with.

Obviously, many times we’ll end up in a church, dorm or neighborhood with people we don’t totally groove to. We are still called to love all with the love of Christ. But love is different than trust and intimacy. We think of Jesus as treating everyone equally, but even Christ had people He connected with on a deeper level, like John, “the disciple Jesus loved,” and Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. (In John 11, Mary and Martha tell Jesus, ‘Lord, the one whom You love is sick,’” then a few verses later the text repeats: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”)

“Love many, trust few, and paddle your own canoe.” I saw that on the back of a pickup and it’s stuck with me ever since. Introverts know this intuitively, but it’s a good reminder for Tiggers like me. It’s become my parents’ new mantra after 15 years of community life.

THE GIFT OF COMMUNITY

I still love the idea of community that flowers from an unusually deep connection to a particular friend or couple. We have a few friends scattered across the country whose presence in our daily life would be more energy-giving than energy-draining. It would be great to be closer to them.

Real Christian community is a gift that God does give on occasion. But like any gift, it can’t be forced or self-given. We should explore the reasons behind our longings, and learn how to till the soil of organic community. It begins in our own souls. The more we confess our sins and let God heal us, the deeper our ability for connecting with others will be. Then, and only then, will community flow from a fullness of being.

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