One Community

Recently I walked into a worship night a few minutes before a man stood up to lead us in communion as they prepared to close.

The next week I learned not only that I would be seeing that random stranger again for another worship night but also that he was related to me. My brother-in-law’s second cousin. 

And it made me so happy. It almost felt silly how happy it made me. But why did it make me happy?

Because I love community. Because God gave me a heart for community. And it’s never been enough for me to have community; I want my community to be shared. 

I’ve always wanted the people I love to love each other. 

I want my friends to be friends with each other. I want them to be friends with my family. I want to hang out with all the people I love together, but I also want them to be able to hang out with each other. To want to hang out with each other when I'm not facilitating. To be joined to each other outside of their joint connection with me.

And this is the vision I have for community. For family. For friends. For churches. We're not all disconnected; we're one community. 

The structure for family in the United States is in the form of immediate and extended. We have our nuclear family, who we prioritize, but many of us still see our extended family. And one day we go from aunts, uncles, and cousins to parents, siblings, and nieces/nephews being our extended family. And hopefully our immediate family is close to our extended family (well, I guess that's not a universal preference even outside of unhealthy dynamics; we like doing our own thing), but they're still separate.

The more I think about it, the more small that image seems. And if this is our ideal, what are we missing?

The main picture I used for this post is beautiful (as a concept and as a photo), but where does it leave us lacking?

One of my deepest desires for marriage is for the family I marry into to feel like a second family. For us to be close. For us to be comfortable with each other. For me to be able to hang out with them and want to hang out with them even when my husband isn't around. And I want that for my husband with my family too.

But I want more than that. I want my family and my family to be family too. I want my in-laws and the family I was born into to want to be around each other.

It makes me so happy that my sister's mother-in-law comes to our family birthday parties. It makes me so happy when my sister-in-law's parents and siblings have traveled hundred of miles to join us for holidays. It makes me so happy to be in a devotional group chat with my sister, my mom, my sister-in-law, and my sister-in-law's mom. Because it's natural; it's how it should be. I love that I get to know my family's family even if we got confused on terms and call my brother-in-law's grandmother Grandma Lou instead of Meemaw. 

And I think I've finally figured out why I love it so much. Because it makes us one family. Instead of different circles of family, we have one circle with multiple layers of depth, closeness, and intimacy. 

We see each other to different extents, but we all belong to each other.

The other day I was listening to an episode of We Need To Talk where the Azonwus discussed the differing American and Nigerian approaches to a wedding and how that led to conflict on their wedding day. In the United States weddings are pretty much centered around the bride. They're about a couple getting married. But the parents of the groom described the day as "our" wedding. The day two families came together to become one. And I think that's so beautiful.

And yes, the more people, the more potential for conflict and miscommunication...but also the more potential for support and counsel. 

I really do think this is how we were designed to exist in community, and we've fallen away from it in the United States. It's not realistic for many of us, but there's something missing without it. Our facets of community have become separate and disconnected, and that leads to isolation or exhaustion.

This extends outside of biological or marital family too. We have made our community small. And as we draw a line to circle after circle of distinct communities, we miss the power and refreshing that comes from them being the same.

I'm so thankful for my friends, but when all my friends come from separate communities, it becomes exhausting to keep up with everyone. And even when we're together, it can be hard to have the people I love in the world be an explanation to a story I'm sharing about them instead of them being a known person.

I have also struggled to feel connection at times to the global church, to the life God is breathing around the world, because we tend to order our fellowship like we order our families. We are a local church. Maybe we have connections to a handful of other churches. But if that is our fellowship, our world is narrow.

Being a part of a local church is good, but that's the core of a much larger community. Instead of moving to circle after circle, we can move from center to outskirts in one circle. From local to regional to national to global to timeless. That's a community we can never come to the end of. And though everyone's center point may be different, that puts all believers in the same circle. We have layers of intimacy and knowing, but we all belong to each other. We are all family, and realizing that changes things.

So whether in family, in friendships, or in fellowship, that's the kind of community I long for. That's the kind of community I believe I was designed for. And that's the kind of community I hope we can begin to step into.