Deeper Community

I have recently been reading a book that approaches community from a completely different perspective than I ever thought of before (Connecting Church, Randy Frazee).  He believes that that true community involves interacting with other people many times during the week in unplanned ways (going to the store, at the post office).  And this kind of community is much stronger than the small groups philosophy that consists of meeting once or twice a week in planned or organized activities.

I agree with what the author says about community.  That is it should allow people within the group to connect with each other in natural unplanned ways.  This idea is actually very prominent in Christian circles today and is referred to as organic (my favorite term), or as one of my friends calls it, “liquid”.  No matter what this relaxed form of interaction is called there seems to be a great need for it within churches.

Organic community basically means that individuals within the group will meet many times during the week outside of church.  The idea is that the people are always doing things together during the week.  And many times these things they do together aren’t planned but just come up spontaneously. 

In a way the members of this community spend so much time together they become like real family.  In time they can gain things such as “refrigerator rights”.  This is the title of a book written by Will Miller and Glen Sparks that discusses the fact that very few of us have rights (privileges) in other peoples lives.  The term refrigerator rights refers to a person feeling comfortable enough to help themselves to a sandwich and drink from another persons refrigerator without asking.

This kind of community goes much deeper than meeting once or twice a week.  The question is how do we gain this?  The author of the book that started my thinking about this had an idea that I first thought was crazy, but is starting to make sense.  According to him true community can only exist between individuals who live within walking distance of each other’s houses. 

After laughing at the idea for a few minutes I realized that Mr. Frazee was right.  The only way to have this “liquid” or “organic” community is to live within close vicinity to one another.  Of course this led to my next question.  How is it possible to do this in the real world where most of us live thirty minutes or more from most of our close friends? 

This thought is heavy on my heart because I desire to have that deeper community with the teens and young adults who I minister to during the week.  I personally feel that there is an answer to that question, but I don’t know what it is.  I guess it isn’t about knowing all of the answers.  Instead it is about trying to develop deeper relationships with fellow Believers.   Maybe the first step to creating this community isn’t moving to a new home, but opening your refrigerator