Have you ever felt alone in a room full of people? Making friends and finding a community is daunting, especially if you’re an introvert like me. What if I told you that “finding a community” isn’t as complicated as we make it out to be? I think you might already have one. Let me explain.
Alone in a New City
A little over a year and a half ago, my husband and I packed the last of our belongings into our white Chevy Impala (that we affectionately named “Vanna”). We said goodbye to our quaint home in smalltown Bellbrook, Ohio, and drove away teary-eyed but excited to embrace the next season of life and ministry God had called us to in Houston, Texas.
We decided to make the 17-hour road trip from Ohio to Texas more fun by stopping in Louisville, Nashville, Birmingham, and New Orleans. We had fun exploring coffee shops and bookstores in each city along the way, but somewhere between Birmingham, AL and New Orleans, LA, it hit me: We aren’t going “home.”
We drove hours and hours away from the only town I’d ever called “home,” our families we adore, and a rich community we prayed desperately for just years prior. I bombarded my husband with frantic questions: “What if Houston doesn’t feel like home?” “What if no one in Houston wants to know me?”
Fortunately, we were welcomed in Texas by a warm and loving church family, and my fears subsided day by day, but I still wondered if I would ever find a community like the one we left behind.
Life Together
While wrestling with homesickness and “community sickness” weeks later, I continued working on my ThM thesis, a long paper I chose to write about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “sociality” and a biblical theology of siblingship in the New Testament. It sounds complicated, but it’s really pretty simple.
Sociality is the “universal human capacity to give and receive relationships.”1 In other words, humans were created to know and be known, and a desire for community is natural and normal. In the church, we give and receive relationships most often as siblings, from brother to brother, sister to sister, or brother to sister, and vice versa.
The basis of this connection to one another as siblings (or fellow believers) is inextricably linked to the image of God that all people bear and the union with Christ believers experience after salvation. Bonhoeffer argues, “We [believers] have one another [other believers] only through Christ, but through Christ we have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.”2 He also argues, “Jesus Christ stands between the lover (the believer) and the others he loves (other believers).”3 The people of God have community with others and shall continue to have community with others only through Christ.4 Christ is the source of our community with God and others.
If this is true—that Christ made me one with him and, by virtue of this union, one with my fellow believers—then I already had the community I longed for. Christian community wasn’t an ideal I had to “find,” but a reality God already created for me to participate in.5 Christian community was established ages ago in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and I was incorporated into it at the moment of my salvation.
Reality Check
I was looking for community in the right place (the church), but I expected to find a group of friends I could immediately “click with.” These people would be the same age and in the same season of life, and they would share my love for ice cream, theology, thrifting, traveling, and running. I expected community to look like an ideal person (exactly like me), and I was missing the community God had already created and established for me.
Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, and interests, I already had community—in the older women who emailed me biweekly to let me know they were praying for me, in the young mom who invited me to join her for a coffee date, and in the 42-year-old male Life Group leader who just so happens to enjoy theology as much as I do. The Christian community I longed for was self-existent all around me; I just needed to approach and participate in it differently.
Found and Ready for You Too
In a true Christian community, we don’t have to share everything in common to experience the richness of Christian relationships. We have Christ in common. We also never have been, and will never be, alone. There is no concept of a believer who is isolated from Christ or isolated from their brothers and sisters. We always have one another, wholly and for all eternity.6
So, will you ever find community? If you are a believer, you already have it. You must pursue it, though. Here are a few practical ways you can pursue Christian community this week:
Engage Your Brothers and Sisters in Weekly Worship Services
Don’t just attend a worship service and leave without saying a word to a fellow believer. Next time you attend the weekly worship gathering, introduce yourself to the family sitting in front of you or the elderly couple walking next to you in the hallway. You might ask these questions: (1) How was your week? (2) What do you enjoy about Sunday mornings? (3) How can I pray for you and your family this week? Make a point of finding this individual, couple, or family the following week and follow up on the conversation.
Remember, it’s ok if they are older or younger than you are, male or female, in a different season of life, or from a different background.
Join a Life Group
I once heard Life Groups described as the “relationship greenhouse” of the church. Life Groups are a safe and intimate space to meet your brothers and sisters and to fulfill the “one another commands” described in Scripture (pray for one another, encourage one another, admonish one another, bear one another’s burdens). If you aren’t sure where to meet other believers, start with a Life Group.
You can find more information about Life Groups at Champion Forest at https://rock.cfbc.org/LifeGroups.
Attend Midweek Activities
There are even opportunities to meet other believers at Champion Forest outside of Sunday mornings. You could attend a weekly Bible Study or special event, or, if you are a young adult, visit The Grove. Each of these Midweek activities will place you in close proximity to other believers pursuing Christian community and Christlikeness just like you.
Ask
If you find a fellow believer that you would like to get to know more or learn from, ask them to grab a meal or cup of coffee with you at some point during the week.
Serve
You learn a lot about people when you serve in the trenches alongside one another. Serving together is one opportunity to “get your hands dirty” together and make an impact on your church or community. I encourage you to consider serving at church on a Sunday morning or during Midweek activities, at the Community Ministry Center, with a local ministry partner, or on a short-term mission trip. There are always opportunities to serve alongside your brothers and sisters.
It’s hard to feel alone in a room full of people when you know you are connected to them for eternity. It’s even harder to feel alone in a room full of people when you know you are in Christ and the Holy Spirit is with you as you go, helping you experience the community he already prepared for you. Step closer to that community this week and enjoy the benefits of knowing others and being known by them.
- Gregg R. Allison, Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2021), 73. ↩︎
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1954), 26. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 26. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 25. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 30. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 26. ↩︎
