Com­mu­nity and rela­tion­ships are hard. Church rela­tion­ships are the trick­i­est that I have ever known. I can work at a job hours and hours a week and expe­ri­ence a cama­raderie with my co-​​workers that endears us to one another. But when the shift is over, when the job is done, I have no expec­ta­tion of any­one call­ing me or stay­ing in touch with me. “Nice work­ing with ya. Good luck,” and off I go, not a trace of angst over the end­ing of know­ing them all.

But in my church com­mu­ni­ties, prob­a­bly just about every sin­gle one that I’ve ever been a part of for more than twenty years, there is always, always bruis­ing and wound­ing from the lack of truly mean­ing­ful friend­ship. Church, it has been said, can be a lonely place.

Why is this? Why is there an expec­ta­tion that peo­ple in my faith com­mu­nity must be my friend every­day of the week and not just Sun­day? I have not expected this from my co-​​workers. My work life and my social life were two sep­a­rate things. But in church, over and over again, there has been the expec­ta­tion that my church and social life must be one and the same. And when it’s not, I feel rejected and won­der why my phone’s not ringing.

I began to reflect on this sev­eral years ago. I was in my late 30’s. My fam­ily and I were part of a large church that had many activ­i­ties and min­istries. I jumped in the swirl and began to form rela­tion­ships with oth­ers who were involved in the same things as me. We enjoyed each other, expe­ri­enced intense spir­i­tual moments together, spoke the same lan­guage, voiced the same long­ings. All the things that make up friend­ship. Except for one detail; our involve­ment was lim­ited to a church build­ing and a church min­istry. Most of my church friends, prob­a­bly 99 per­cent, had never been to my home nor I to theirs. The peo­ple I would pray with and cry with and have spir­i­tual inti­macy with did not know my children’s names or know that I am an avid rose gar­dener with over 20 rose bushes in my backyard.

It was like an illu­sion, the illu­sion of friend­ship and the illu­sion of community.

What is com­mu­nity? It’s a word that is thrown around a lot in the blo­gos­phere and the cir­cles I travel in. What does it mean and why do we search for it, only to turn up empty handed over and over again?

Some peo­ple, I have known over the years, in an effort to cre­ate and sus­tain com­mu­nity, will choose to live together in a co-​​housing sit­u­a­tion. I know of one such com­mu­nity in my neigh­bor­hood. These peo­ple have suc­cess­fully lived together for almost twenty years. Not a lifestyle for every­one, shar­ing of prop­erty and liv­ing in such close prox­im­ity, espe­cially for fiercely inde­pen­dent Amer­i­cans, but they’ve made it work. I have also known oth­ers who will pur­chase homes in the same area or neigh­bor­hood. One fam­ily I know divided up a large piece of land they had inher­ited and parceled it out to friends to build homes on and live together like a com­mune. It worked for awhile, until fam­i­lies moved away and new fam­i­lies, unknown, moved in.

Are we so des­per­ate for a tribe that we look for ways to cre­ate one?

I love my church. I have loved every church that I have been a part of, the big ones, the con­ser­v­a­tive uptight ones, the loud and rowdy one we now call home. And here’s the thing: Church is Peo­ple. Church is my spir­i­tual com­mu­nity. It is the place where oth­ers, like me, are in hot pur­suit of God and mean­ing for life. That mean­ing, the feel­ing of sig­nif­i­cance, is found pri­mar­ily in faith and com­mu­nity. At least it is for me.

My best friend in the world is stay­ing at my house right now. She and her fam­ily live in China and are home for a sum­mer break. (Eight peo­ple, one bath­room, good times!!!) We are expe­ri­enc­ing an amaz­ing level of com­mu­nity in my home right now. Other adults are help­ing me and Jerry run our home. We par­ent each oth­ers kids. We have big, noisy meals together. Kim and I go for long walks dis­cussing every­thing under the sun that we’ve been sav­ing up since we last saw each other. This past week we have been entrenched with talk about rela­tion­ships and learn­ing how to nav­i­gate the give and take — and cer­tain rejec­tion that we’ll receive and also dole out —  to those around us.

She loaned me an arti­cle that she keeps folded up in her purse. It’s writ­ten by that great Catholic mys­tic, Henri Nouwen. Here’s some excerpts:

Com­mu­nity is not an orga­ni­za­tion; com­mu­nity is a way of liv­ing: you gather around you peo­ple with whom you want to pro­claim the truth that we are the beloved sons and daugh­ters of God.

If we do not know that we are sons and daugh­ters of God we are going to expect some­one in the com­mu­nity to make us feel that way. They can­not. We’ll expect some­one to give us that per­fect, uncon­di­tional love. But com­mu­nity is not lone­li­ness grab­bing onto loneliness.

For­give­ness and cel­e­bra­tion are what make a com­mu­nity. For­give­ness is to allow the other per­son not to be God. For­give­ness says, “I know you love me, but you don’t always have to love me uncon­di­tion­ally, because no human being can do that.”

To for­give other peo­ple for being able to give you only a lit­tle love — that’s a hard dis­ci­pline. To keep ask­ing oth­ers for for­give­ness because you can only give a lit­tle love — that’s a hard dis­ci­pline, too. …still, that is where com­mu­nity starts to be cre­ated, when we come together in a for­giv­ing and unde­mand­ing way.
(Lead­er­ship Mag­a­zine, 1995)

I am prone to feel­ings of rejec­tion. I have a nat­ural bent —  from years of hav­ing a poor
self-​​image — to imag­ine that I am unwanted and for­got­ten. Over­looked. Insignif­i­cant. Invis­i­ble.
I don’t matter.

The past four years have been espe­cially try­ing in regards to how I see myself in that rag­ing beauty known as The Church. I am secure in the love of my Father, but I’ve been unsure about the fam­ily of God. My rela­tion­ships in every sin­gle church I have ever been a part of have been based on min­istry performance.

My phone rang off the hook when I was in the swirl at our for­mer large church. But once I pulled the plug and pulled back, the lit­tle red light on my answer­ing machine stopped blink­ing. What hap­pened? Peo­ple I thought I had a car­ing friend­ship with were sud­denly no longer all that inter­ested in me.

But how could they be? Our only con­text for relat­ing was in church and in church related busy­ness. They loved me when we were in the build­ing together. Sun­days were awe­some. For ninety min­utes. But then, when the doors were closed and it seemed like I was usu­ally one of the last ones to leave, I’d head home and for the next six days my life was dis­con­nected. The phone quiet. Mes­sages unre­turned. Emails ignored. WTF?

I can under­stand why peo­ple get pissed off and storm out of churches swear­ing that the peo­ple in them are just a bunch of hyp­ocrites. Really. I do. But here’s the thing: I think this hap­pens because we have a dis­torted expec­ta­tion… if we put that same expec­ta­tion on our­selves we’ll quickly learn that it can­not be ful­filled. How many peo­ple have I unknow­ingly wounded because I didn’t notice they were gone so I didn’t call them? How many rela­tion­ships have been jaded and dis­il­lu­sioned by how lov­ing I acted on Sun­day, yet did not invite to my table at my house on Monday?

I am the Church, and as St Augus­tine said, “The church is a whore…but she is my mother.” I am the dys­func­tional one in the com­mu­nity. It’s me. Because I have expected other wounded broth­ers and sis­ters to get me and help pro­vide mean­ing to my life.

These days, I am so very happy that I live in much greater free­dom and peace about my church fam­ily. The red light still doesn’t blink. I rarely see any­one out­side of a Sun­day morn­ing or other church orga­nized gath­er­ing, and that’s ok. Just because they’re my church fam­ily does not mean they have to fill up my social cal­en­dar. I enjoy cel­e­brat­ing Jesus and being the beloved with my beloved sis­ters and broth­ers, even for only 90 min­utes once a week. It’s not their respon­si­bil­ity to cre­ate mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance for my life. That’s some­thing I have to sort out inside of me.

Church is lonely, but so is life. At the end of the day, we each live alone in our own skin, with our shad­ows and secrets and long­ings and bro­ken dreams. But our iden­tity, the core of who we are, is not rooted in our fail­ures or suc­cesses, or com­mu­nity or friend­ships, or blink­ing red lights. Our iden­tity, my iden­tity, is anchored in that I am the beloved daugh­ter of my Maker. This is the mean­ing of my life.

(tat­too on my arm, by Aaron Goodrich of Port­land, OR)