community college, community church

Today, I’m going to take a break from writing about books. Because really, I promise, I have done other things besides read this summer! I have also been observing classes and tutoring in the ESL program at my local community college.

And I’ve realized… ‘community college’ is a terrible misnomer.

Maybe it’s because the college is servicing students from a 15-mile radius. Maybe it’s because it’s the summer and not the semester. Maybe it’s because I’m not actually taking real classes. But there is not much ‘community*’ about this college. 

Frankly, I miss it. I miss Notre Dame and the community I have there. I miss New Covenant and the community I had there. I have always associated school with really intense relationships and a committed Emmaus-walk mentality. I’m not exactly finding that at community college.

I guess it’s not necessary to get at school, though. I do interact with other people besides the ESL folks. I go to church with my family every Sunday! …whatever church we’re visiting that week, anyway. And when Sunday mornings look like that… ‘community church’ is just as misleading a name.

We’ve visited a couple of those. A couple of Baptist churches. An LCMS church. A Methodist church. And none of them, the community churches included, have been very forthcoming with the fellowship. Maybe that’s because we’ve never been anywhere more than twice… but still.

And I miss it. I miss Fulkerson and the community I have there. I miss Mt. Zion and the community I had there. I have always associated church with discipling and being discipled, with life together with people who share my priorities and my loves. I haven’t gotten that in church the last few weeks.

I miss community.

I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than two weeks of my post-middle-school life without community, without good friends and strong spiritual support physically present to me. When my friends at ND used to talk about their trepidation going home on breaks… that it was harder to remain disciplined, harder to see God, harder to feel loved, harder to feel happy… I never got it. Yes, the community available at school (especially through ISI & various other campus ministry groups) is amazing. But I went home to community that was only slightly less awesome, if at all.

I get it now.

I’m wondering about the next few months. Do I choose a place, dive in, and try to ‘create’ community… and all of the accountability, vulnerability, and self-denying love that goes with it… or do I hold out another 11 weeks on my own? The whole make community happen now thing seemed to work last summer, at Vision. We only had 5 weeks together, and we went from strangers to best friends. I’ve got more than twice that amount of time. But somehow it’s scarier now.

So I wonder, what do you do when you’re in a place where

• you have no existing community?
• there are no structures in place to facilitate community?
• you know you’re only going to be around for a few months?

That’s not a hypothetical question. It is very relevant to my life now, and it becomes even more relevant looking ahead at the month I’ll be spending here this winter, the months I’ll be spending in Russia next spring, and whatever I’ll be doing somewhere in the world next summer. Since my family moved in January, I officially live a life-in-transit. I don’t have a stable ‘home’ anymore, and I don’t have any guarantees that the places I’ll be over the next years will be good at faking it. How do I handle myself?

Do I…

• find people and surreptitiously adopt them into what I will secretly call my community?
• find people and ask them to be brothers and sisters to me?
• sit still and wait with anticipation for God to provide people for me?
• render myself (somehow) independent of the need for community?
• do something else entirely?

I don’t exactly know. 



* Click the link. Definitions of overused terms/jargon are good.