Community. It’s something that is getting discovered all over again. Face Book, Meet-up, and other social media outlets are all now pushing community as a way to get back to adding the more personal aspects of how do we life together. Yet, I think we all struggle with what does community really look like and how do we actually create community and more importantly, LASTING community (the picture here is community that started 35 years ago in a young couple’s class). My word picture for community is one of having your hands touch at the finger tips with the five points of contacts (activities). Each one of the contact points being one of the touch points within a given community; so, if one or even two points (activities) are no longer connected, the other touch points still keep the community together. And within these activities, there needs to be the: intentionality, commitment, availability, confidentiality, openness, etc.
Hiking is a form of community that draws us together. 14ers.com, The Manitou Incline Everything’s Better on the Incline, and other Face Book sites allow us to become part of communities where we can connect. But within these sites, it can become easy to let others do all the work; with us just gleaming the information, but not doing any of the initiation needed to connect and create community. I know at times, I don’t post or invite others to hike with me because I think “It’s a hassle to hike with others that may be faster or slower than me.” In those times, I need to remind myself of what Pastor Boyd said: “You may go faster by yourself, but you will go further with others.” Thus reminding me that it’s not about how fast I’m going, but the community I’m creating by hiking with others. And like the five points of contact with finger tips; it’s a variety of hiking distances with others; which for me this past year was everything from local 4-mile short hikes to Balanced Rock to a 3-day road trip to hike 27 miles across the Grand Canyon.
In my personal life, community can take place with my neighbors, associations, and those on the outer perimeter in my life. Having become a “dog” family, I’ve found that our dog has gotten us to interact with our neighbors faster than anything else, because he is always getting out and wanting to play with the other dogs that live around us. Thus, getting us to go find him and interact with others. Birthday parties, summer BBQs, playing “Hand and Foot” are just some ways we can do life together. Within each of our community groups, it’s important to have a variety of activities that keep us connected. In one case, a community for us started as five couples getting together for a meal and discussion twice a month. Additional touch points then came to life as the guys started a monthly movie night and the gals would get together for lunch.
At work, community comes with the one-on-one interactions and finding common areas of interest. I’ve been in several “team” meetings, where we have exchanged pleasantries, but with no real connections taking place. However, when I moved those interactions to a one-on-one lunch discussion or a hike/walk; a whole new world opened up as questions are asked to start conversations. And I really think it’s the asking of questions that cracks open the door for community to start taking place as we show genuine interest in others. I remember at different times, where I started with simple questions like: “I noticed you haven’t been at work lately?” or “I see you went from a supervisory role to a contributor role, how did that make you feel?” While both are more personal type questions; when asked in the context of being one-on-one with intentionality, the openness is there a majority of the time. In both cases, the responses were very lengthy; and at the end, both people basically said “Wow, I’ve never shared that with anyone at work, but then, you are the first one to ever ask that question.”
Community: we all want it, but so often we don’t know how to start creating it. I’m reminded of when we had a Russian translator visiting us here in America and after a few weeks with him being here, I asked him, “What do you like and dislike about America so far?” His response was: “I like it when people ask me how are you doing? But I don’t like it when I start to take 5 minutes to tell them and they are already walking away.” Let’s become intentional about taking the time to listen to the responses from others and build on that with follow-up questions. Community; it can start with simply being available and just asking one question at a time.
Al Andersen 