Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

But connection costs something, more than many are willing to pay.

I promise that what you’ll gain in the bargain is more than worth it, but it will require you to reconsider most everything in your life today.

Everything I’ll be asking of you in our journey together requires that you risk your comfort and your routines. And yet everything in your life aches for the change I am inviting you to experience.

Scripture says that the Son exists to glorify the Father, and that the Father exists to glorify the Son. It says that the Spirit exists to glorify them both. What that means is that they help each other, they promote each other, they serve each other, and they love each other. What’s more, this exchange has been going on for all eternity.

God loves us to be together. God loves us to be on mission together. God loves us to worship Him together.

The Bible was penned in the context of people daily living interconnected lives.

How arrogant are we to think that even though the God of the universe exists in community, our little fragile finite selves can survive without it? No, there is a beautiful God-built plan for having our souls be full, satisfied.

The Enemy Hates Community

This is a depiction of war, a description of two distinct sides, and a reminder that everything is at stake.

We are called to be a community of people, on a mission, delighting in God, delighting in each other, redeemed and reconciling the world, bringing them and inviting them into this family. This is the ultimate purpose of community.

And what should be true of us who love Jesus and follow Him is that, because we have found our identity in Him, we enter human relationships without lists of expectations and neediness.

Christ followers enter human relationships full of hope and full of confidence to love others, regardless of the treatment they receive in return.

But this village living will not happen by accident. We’ll have to build a new life.

Caroline Parker taught me in short order that my little village here was going to (1) come because of my neediness and desperation, not in spite of it, and (2) be built in unexpected ways and with unexpected people.

We wait for those perfect few friends to come along, and then we look for them to play so many roles in our lives. We look to them to be everything to us. What if the power of a little team of friends is that each one brings different things to your life?

Needing Each Other Is Not Weakness but Strength

“The more resources a person gets, the more walls he or she puts up. And the more lonely they become.”

When I slow down and really consider what life looked like back in the Garden of Eden, I see five realities: Proximity. They enjoyed physical closeness to each other and God. Transparency. They were naked and unashamed, fully known and fully loved. Accountability. They lived under submission to God and to each other. Shared Purpose. They were given a clear calling to care for creation. Consistency. They couldn’t quit each other.

You will disappoint me. I will disappoint you. God will never disappoint us. Accepting this shifts our expectations from people to God. And He can handle our expectations.

Our church, as I would soon discover, takes community very, very seriously. As in, tell-the-truth-about-your-struggles seriously. As in, tell-the-whole-truth-about-your-struggles seriously.

Jesus rescuing us from our sin and giving us a way out changes not only our eternal future with Him, but it also empowers us to love like Him here. “All

God purposefully set you in your place and in your time to love people in such a way that they will feel their way toward Him and find Him.

What began in a village with a tight group of people would reach generations and the ends of the earth. This is the endgame of community: we find our people, and together we build safe, beautiful outposts that offer the love of God.

You and I both desire deep connection. We want someone to know our deepest, darkest secrets and to love us anyway. But that type of community doesn’t come naturally. We have to look for it and then fight to protect it once we have it.

You will never find the perfect people to do life with you, because those people don’t exist. You will always be doing community with sinners.

So what should you look for?

Availability.

Humility.

Transparency.

Run—don’t walk—away from toxic people who will lead you into sin and away from God. Instead, choose friends who will fight for you, friends who will fight alongside you, and friends who are as committed as you are to fighting against the dark.

We can’t have what we aren’t willing to become.

We’re not meant to go through our days alone.

We’re not meant to learn alone. Or to work alone. Or to do chores alone. Or to relax alone. Or to celebrate alone. Or to cry alone. Or to make decisions alone.

We must become the people we want in our lives.

The same is true about our relationships and our behaviors. When we think the same thoughts, we manifest the same behaviors, and those behaviors impact our relationships in similar ways.

That way of life is possible—with God. So let’s imagine together what that might look like. What if we chose to do life in close proximity to each other? What if we lived less guarded and more openhearted with each other? What if we chose people in our lives who challenged us to be better each time we were together? What if we shared a deeper purpose in our relationships? What if we stayed instead of quitting each other when it gets difficult?

Fires bring us together. Real life, face to face, no phones, together.

We are meant to short-circuit when we are surrounded by people we aren’t engaging with. It’s supposed to make us feel tortured inside when we act alone in the context of perfectly good people we could be hanging out with and loving

Be close to those we’re close to—that’s my goal for us. And it’s admittedly a stretch goal. Because most of us choose to hold on to friends from past residences and past lives, believing that since nobody who is right here in front of us will ever measure up to those precious people, why bother making new friends?

You have to build it as you’re going. Relationships should arise out of your everyday places and your everyday activities.

Everybody is busy, and few people are prioritizing deep connection. In other words, plan to go first. Connection takes stepping out and being intentional again and again. If you’re thinking, I’ve done that for so long, and nobody is reciprocating, let me gently encourage you to be sad for exactly one minute and then to get over it and own that role. You will never have friends unless you are willing to consistently initiate. Be the one who reaches out. Initiate and initiate again. You can’t expect to have friends unless you get good at this.

Community should, in its truest form, reflect aspects of who God is and how He loves. Which brings me to a question: Who has God put in your life—here and now and right under your nose—that you haven’t really connected with yet?

Talking about a work project or your kids is fine, but I won’t leave feeling known or truly knowing you. To have deeper conversations, we have to learn the art of asking more intentional questions. I will give you more on this in the next chapter, but here are two to try out: “What are you longing for?” “What is making you anxious?”

Four years of building and investing and choosing connection over isolation, and I had my people.

Researchers say that to grow an acquaintance to a good friend takes clocking two hundred hours together.

Remember to look for your people in unexpected places. Life stage doesn’t matter. Age doesn’t matter. Find the people who are following after Jesus, and then go with them.

What one of my dearest friends needed from me wasn’t more attention, more camaraderie, more support. What she needed from me was more of me.

While admittedly painful—excruciating even, depending on the day—the lesson I’m learning right now is that vulnerability is the soil for intimacy, and what waters intimacy is tears. Real, raw, gut-wrenching honesty

We think the root problem of our isolation is chronic busyness or tech addiction or broken families or the Church, but the problem is inside all of us. It was, and it is, and it will continue to be, until Jesus returns.

The devil is good at his job. Not only does he use shame to strip us of connection and community, but his whisper invades our thinking and multiplies the pain: It’s your own fault that you’re alone. Ugh. It isn’t enough to feel alone. We feel guilty that it’s our fault! Pain and shame compel us to hide behind walls of self-protection.