Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

I have fun friends who always make a plan and always make me laugh. I have wise friends who give me advice and call me out. I have encouraging friends who cheer me on and tell me what I’m doing well. I have challenging friends who disrupt my thinking and push back against assumptions I have made or push me to take greater risks. If I expected one or two people to fill all those roles, no one would ever hit the mark. Also true: if I didn’t appreciate the unique roles my friends play in my life, I might be mad that my “challenger” friend doesn’t encourage me more, or my “wise” friend isn’t fun all the time. If I start to see that God has put different people in my life to bless me in different ways, then I can both embrace who they are and rest in what I bring to those relationships.

“How can I belong to an intimate community of people?”

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

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. They needed each other and shared everything together. These five “tastes of heaven” provide the framework for how we build healthy community in our own lives today. God established a perfect community that we can work to reclaim here and now.

You will disappoint me. I will disappoint you. God will never disappoint us.

I tend to be gregarious in social situations and come off extremely extroverted, engaged, and fun, but raise the stakes and dive into how life really is going, and man, do my walls go up fast. And now a bunch of perfect strangers were supposed to have access to my deepest thoughts? My desires? My spending patterns? My use of time? Yikes.

Jesus’s people were all wrong—except that they were willing. And they were wanting. And they were all in.

The internet is not your village. Every problem you hear about in the news is not yours to solve. We are exhausted from trying. We need to rebuild our infrastructure with healthy villages and commit to being healthy participants in the villages that we build.

You will always be doing community with sinners.

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.

Proximity.

Transparency.

Who can you most truly be yourself with?

Accountability to Others.

Who are you living close to that has permission to wallop you when you need it?

A Shared Purpose.

Who is near you already, working beside you, and how could you bring more purpose to the friendships you already have?

Consistency.

How do we stay and commit and spend regular time with people, even if they hurt us?