Three Ways to Cultivate Community--Summer Edition

Even as more snow blankets the Washington, DC area this morning, the opportunity to exploit the summertime sun for community-building is just around the corner.

Let's be frank--communities often don't have a real sense of community anymore, especially in large, metropolitan areas like the DC region. Often times, one parent if not both parents in a household are competing with ten or more hours of traffic a week to work a job that keeps well over your standard forty hours a week.

It's even worse for single parents, who are often working more than one job to keep them afloat. Whenever parents do arrive home, they try to soak up a little bit of that precious time they have remaining with their children, or they retreat to a mindless stress-reliever, like television or the internet.

What such lifestyles don't typically allow is much time for family, community, exercise, or recreation. Though little time is left for these things, that does not mean that we should not encourage them. In areas such as ours, families break up all the time. The lack of community causes loneliness and isolation, especially in hard seasons of life. Exercise will of course help prevent the heart attack at forty five for the sedentary, cubicle-bound workaholic. Recreation...well...all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

And let's not forget, for lack of a better term, "spirituality" as a necessary component of life. As work dominates the narrative of individual and family lives, it takes all focus off the deep, existential questions that are at the core of human existence. On the surface, this lack of focus on the existential is a source of comfort and pride--"I don't have time for such questions!" Beneath the surface, however, it only agitates the problem of one's meaning and purpose in life. Work is a pretty petty veneer for finding value in life. This create a sense of existential angst.

So it is our job--yours and mine--to work to cultivate community and reforge the bonds of friendship and affection--despite these obstacles--that are sorely lacking in our culture. As such projects seem too ambitious and overwhelming from the outset, here are three easy ways to start his "community cultivation" project:

1) Arrange weekly neighborhood barbecues before you invite anyone over.

We often get caught in the dating game--no, not romantic nights out, but the game of figuring out a date on the calendar that will work for different parties to get together. Often, the agreed upon date ends up somewhere between three months later and never. It's much easier to plan the backyard barbecue and invite people. If no one can make, keep inviting until you find someone who can.

Worried about the cost of a weekly barbecue? Even if you cover all the costs, a meal that focuses on hot dogs, chips, and soda should still keep you around the $20 mark. Still too much? If someone accepts the invite, he/she will likely ask if you need anything. Ask him/her to bring a bag of chips.

2) Prioritize those who are least like you for invitations and attention.

James speaks to this issue in Scripture. He speaks of a religion that is pure and faultless as being characterized by looking after widows and orphans in their distress and keep unpolluted by the world. He then condemns favoritism, which is antithetical to the Gospel. Indeed, Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that as we treat the poor (not just materially poor), so we treat Him. The beauty of Jesus' work in this regard is that He traded the riches of eternal glory and made Himself poor for our sake, becoming to death, even death on a cursed cross (Gal. 3, 4; Phil. 2).

On a practical level, we tend to associate most naturally with those who are most like us. For my wife and I, it would be fellow twice-over Yuppies (young, urban professionals and young, urban parents). By reaching out to older parents and their kids, single parents, and international families in our neighborhood, we are showing our neighbors that our deck is open to all. And because we are not picking "winners" and "losers" amongst the neighbors, our home will hopefully become known as a place where the sinner-sufferer can find unconditional love and words of peace and hope.

3) As you learn about those in community, use that knowledge to serve them.

Do you have a single mother in your neighborhood who is at her wits end and just needs a break? Invite her children over to play with your own. Is the wife down the street struggling unsuccessfully to carry all of her groceries in from the car? Go out and help her. Is the husband next door have a rough go of it with his job? Invite him over a drink and/or cigar to just hang out. And few people will refuse you the opportunity to not only pray for them in your own time, but to pray with them in the moment.

Notice that I didn't put "share the Gospel" or "invite them to church" anywhere on this list. Those should certainly be intermediate goals (with the ultimate goal being to glorify God), but we are not sharing the Gospel into the wind, nor are we inviting robots to church. We are sharing the Gospel with specific people with specific struggles, needs, and joys. There is a place in every puzzle-person for the Gospel, but that place does not always take the same shape. In the same way, I am not inviting Fred to church because I want more people at my church. I am inviting Fred because he is unsuccessfully looking to his job for meaning, and I believe that he can only find true meaning in the cross and living in Christ.

We pour out our hearts and lives to others, sin-sick and suffering like ourselves, because we love them with a God-given love. A love that burns within us and through us because Jesus Christ became poor for sin-sick and suffering so that they might be rich in grace and in the glory to come. Such mercy compels us with love and joy and gratitude. So let us go out and be "community organizers," not as a job but as our privileged calling.