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The Simple Things, Part 1: Community

How Hard Is This Supposed to Be?

I have a very hard head. As a child I never broke a bone, but I did have multiple concussions. And I got them doing really intelligent things like tying a blanket to a tree limb to make a hammock. Or playing tag with hula hoops. (Don't ask.) Apparently, my skull is quite durable, because I still have enough brain cells left to write this article.

In addition to being tough physically, my head's also pretty hard, figuratively speaking. I have a penchant for learning things the hard way. Or for making things more difficult than they actually are. In college, that was especially true of my spiritual life. When I faced big issues, I often felt like God was playing games with me, hiding His purpose so I'd have to search to find it.

At some point, I realized that God often speaks in the form of very simple principles. At first, I didn't think that those truths could possibly be the answers to my complex questions because they were so ... well, simple. Nonetheless, I started paying more attention to the simple things in God's Word. And actually practicing them. When I did, I learned that God has hidden His purposes, but not in the way I thought He had. He hasn't hidden them from us. Instead, He has buried the fullness of His plan deep within the simplest truths of His Word, so that we have to apply those truths to mine the depths of His design for us. Don't believe me? Try it.

The Secret of Community

Let me give an example. One of my biggest frustrations in college was community. I went to a Christian university and signed up to live in a dorm because I was certain I would immediately find an amazing community of close friends. And while God did bless me with a few very good friends, the community experience wasn't all I expected it to be. I longed to find a small, intimate group of comrades — who all liked each other, of course — who would share everything from meal times to road trips to intense prayer. It just didn't happen. I can say now that that's because I wasn't taking seriously God's commands for how we're to live together. These ideas have sunk in slowly, over several years. And now I recognize that they're God's recipe for growing community — organically, simply.

Love God. Love your neighbor.

Five words. Jesus says they sum up all of the Old Testament.¹ By His life and teaching, He affirms that they sum up everything. Truthfully, we could spend our whole lives working at these two simply stated imperatives. And for community, they're absolutely foundational. First, love God. He is the basis of our bond. Sure, community exists in the secular world. Watch Miracle. Or Band of Brothers. Those are stories of communities centered around a common goal, and they're real. But Christian community is something supernatural. It's so transcendent that Jesus told the disciples the world would recognize them as His just by the way they treated each other.²

Second, love your neighbor. Love is proactive. It's making a choice to do the best for another person, regardless of the cost to yourself. And that means stepping up. Sticking your neck out. Making yourself vulnerable. This is the part I was missing when I started college. I expected community to come to me. I was disappointed when it didn't. But waiting for someone else to pursue you isn't love. When I began reaching out to others — even though I risked their rejection — community sprouted.

Be together.

The end of Acts 2³ is often held up as the example of the community that existed in the early church. It's a picture I longed to participate in, but something about it eluded me. Reading that paragraph now, I notice another simple truth. The believers prioritized time together. They ate together, prayed together, worshipped together and learned together. Did I mention that they ate together? (Acts mentions it twice in just four verses.) It's another proactive thing we can do to create and grow community.

But college makes that hard. Many of us are on campuses that are exponentially larger than our high schools. There are tons of people around. Classes change every semester, so theoretically, you could spend your days with an entirely new cohort twice a year. Unless you choose a handful of people and invest your time in them, you'll wake up one day and realize that you've met everybody, but you don't really know anybody. That's what happened to me. Several years later, I'm finally learning that, though prioritizing time with close friends is sometimes difficult in our fast-paced society, it's absolutely vital for the growth of community.

Be hospitable.

Romans 12:13 commands that believers "practice hospitality."⁴ If that seems to be a restatement of the idea of previous idea, it might be because hospitality is a dying art these days. Hospitality goes beyond intentionally hanging out: it invites.

If you're skeptical about the power of hospitality, think of how good it feels to spend Sunday afternoon in a "real house." Or to sit down to a meal that didn't come from a cafeteria serving line. Hospitality doesn't have to be fancy. It just needs to show that you've put a bit of forethought into making someone else feel at home. That's hard, if you live in a dorm room. But not impossible. Think about baking something yummy for someone who has prayed for you. Or what about inviting an international student home with you for Thanksgiving?

My junior year, I was an RA, and I was quite single. So, on Valentine's Day, I invited all the women on my floor who were otherwise unoccupied to Pizza Hut. (It's not very crowded on V-day.) But instead of going with them to dinner, I arrived at the restaurant half an hour early to set out a table cloth, candles and a special place card for each girl. That was one way I could practice hospitality when I didn't have a home of my own to invite people to. It's amazing how far a little hospitality will go toward building community, especially in a world where it's a rare treat.

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Here's another pearl from Romans 12⁵: We're to share each other's joys and sorrows. This one didn't hit home with me until several years after college, and I wish I had "gotten" it earlier. Here's how the simple truth struck me: One Friday, a coworker came to work late because he had accompanied his pregnant wife to her ultrasound appointment — they were going to find out whether they were having a boy or a girl. To their surprise and delight, they discovered they were having … both. Needless to say, the celebration that ensued when he showed up with those little black and white pictures was remarkable.

Just four days later, the same coworker found out that his job was being eliminated. Crushing. And all the more because he needed a way to support his wife and not one, but two kids. The tears we shared matched in intensity the squeals of joy we had experienced the previous week. Some time later, I realized that our whole staff had grown closer through the process of sharing one guy's rejoicing and mourning.

It wasn't just the emotion — we were given an opportunity to demonstrate our love and commitment by providing financial support to help this young family weather their unexpected storm. Though I'd have gladly forgone the lesson to keep my colleague on the job, I've now learned that jumping into to the joys and sorrows of those around me is one of the best ways to build community.

Confront and forgive.

I saved this one 'til last, because it was probably the hardest lesson for me to learn. Not that it's difficult on paper. Matthew 18:15-35 lays it out plainly — when someone sins against us, we're supposed to confront. And when someone asks for forgiveness, we need to freely forgive. But when I started college, I was scared to death of conflict.⁶ So when frustrations and offenses arose, I would always find a way to explain them away. Or to tell myself that I shouldn't be hurt. Anything to avoid confrontation. It wasn't until I was considering marrying my husband that I finally discovered the connection between confrontation and community. When we do confrontation right, we end up resolving issues that come between us. Though the process might not be fun, ultimately, it brings us closer than if we'd never experienced conflict in the first place.

The Simple Things

C O F F E E  S H O P

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What are some ways you've built community with those around you?

Join the discussion!

It shouldn't surprise me that God's simplest principles form the core of life's most important things. Like community. But too often, I blow past those plain truths because I'm certain that something more complex is needed. Still, as the years go by, they keep bearing themselves out. And now I'm certain that whether I'm trying to grow community where there is none, or looking to take community with me as I leave a particularly strong experience of it, the simple things are the things to start with.

Go to Part 2: Finding God's Will