By Jennie Allen
My Personal Takeaways →Allen writes from raw honesty: we are lonelier than ever because we’ve built our lives to be self-sufficient. More than three in five Americans report being chronically lonely. The core framework: consistency, proximity, vulnerability, accountability, and commitment. We’ve traded radical connectedness for safe independence.
Allen doesn’t romanticize it. Real community requires choosing people even when they disappoint you and letting yourself be known even when it’s terrifying. Read this if your social life is wide but shallow, or if you’ve been waiting for community to find you. Implement it by choosing three to five people deliberately, meeting with consistency rather than convenience, and practicing vulnerability one small step at a time — starting with honesty, not confession.
By Jennie Allen
It is not good for man to be alone. —God, after He built the first human on earth
I want us to trade lonely and isolated lives that experience brief bursts of connectedness for intimately connected lives that know only brief intervals of feeling alone.
Do you believe that you were built for true, radical connection? Even if you’re an introvert, we all are physically, emotionally, and spiritually hardwired by God for relationship. From the moment you were born until you take your last breath, deep, authentic connection is the thing your soul most craves. Not just as an occasional experience, but as a reality woven into every day of your life. But to access this reality, you’ll have to make some changes. Because something is fundamentally wrong with how we have built our lives. We spend our evenings and weekends tucked into our little residences with our little family or our roommates or alone, staring at our little screens. We make dinner for just us and never want to trouble our neighbors for anything. We fill a small, little crevice called home with everything we could possibly need, we keep our doors locked tight, and we feel all safe and sound. But we’ve completely cut ourselves off from people outside our little self-protective world.
Research says that more than three in five Americans report being chronically lonely, and that number is “on the rise.”These stats are indicators of a grave and costly crisis. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts are all on the rise.
You know what you were actually built for? Long, meaningful conversations with people who have known you for years and would donate their kidney if you needed it. People who drop by with pizza and paper plates unannounced because they missed you and aren’t afraid to intrude. Regular unscheduled and unhurried time with people who feel like family, even if they aren’t. The obvious few who scream with joy when you share your awesome news and cry with you when you share your hard stuff. People who show up early to help you cook and stay late to clean up. People who hurt you and who are hurt by you, but who choose to work through it with you instead of both of you quitting on each other. People who live on mission beside you, who challenge you and make you better. People who know they are your people, and you are theirs. People who belong to each other.
I begin this journey with you aware of two things: People make up the best parts of life. People make up the most painful parts of life.
Connection costs something, more than many are willing to pay. If you choose to join me in this adventure of building authentic community, I promise that what you’ll gain in the bargain is more than worth it, but it will require you to reconsider most everything in your life today. Specifically: Your daily and weekly routines. The way that you buy groceries. The new neighborhood you’re considering. Whether or not you live near your family. The church you choose to be part of. What you do this weekend. And deeper still: how open you choose to be about your difficult marriage. And about your fight with anxiety, which is getting worse. And whether you’ll ask the hard question of the person you love who is drinking too much. And if you’ll forgive and fight for the people who have hurt you deeper than you could ever imagine.
Here’s what we do: We spend hours alone in our crowded, noisy, screen-lit worlds, we invest only sporadic time with acquaintances, and then we expect close friends to somehow appear in our busy lives. We think our acquaintances should just magically produce two to five BFFs. Then, we believe, our relational needs will be met.
Inside that 150 are layers of friendship that deepen with how much time you spend with a person and the degree of your relationship with them. Research suggests that we can handle only fifty people in what we will call our acquaintances. Within those fifty people, there are fifteen people in our village. And within our village, we have a capacity to make five of them our BFFs. You read that right. Only five!
And what pushes people deeper into our inner circles of friends? The amount of time we spend with them.
My friend I mentioned earlier, Lindsey, is the type of friend who calls me on the phone instead of texting, stops by unannounced instead of asking first, and shows up to pull me out of my robe even when I say I want to be alone. And she calls me in the middle of a cry, when she’s hurting, raw, and still confused about why she feels so sad. She lets me into the messy moments because she knows that suffering alone only makes suffering worse.
I’m writing because this kind of genuine community is essential to living but we have made it an accessory.
We’ve replaced intrusive, real conversations with small talk, and we’ve substituted soul-baring, deep, connected living with texts and a night out together every once in a while,
Because the more I look into the why of our neediness and the problem of our loneliness, the more convinced I am that at our core we are made to be fully known and fully loved. Loved and known regularly and over time by family members, close friends, mentors, coworkers. God built us for deep connection to be part of our day-in, day-out lives, not just once in a while in the presence of a paid therapist.
In nearly every generation since creation began, people have lived in small communities, hunting together, cooking together, taking care of their kids together. No locks, no doors. They shared communal fires outdoors and long walks to get water, doing their best to survive day by day. People were rarely alone. They lived communally, in shared spaces, with a variety of generations present, leveraging each other’s talents, sharing each other’s resources, knowing each other’s business, caring for each other’s family members, holding each other accountable, and having each other’s backs, not just to stay alive, but also in an effort to live more fulfilled together.
We don’t come together in our pain. We isolate. We insulate. We pretend. We call after the cry.
Outside of Jesus, relationships are the greatest gifts we have on earth and simultaneously the most difficult part of being alive.
Scripture says that the Son exists to glorify the Father, and that the Father exists to glorify the Son. It says that the Spirit exists to glorify them both. What that means is that they help each other, they promote each other, they serve each other, and they love each other.
The relationship He has in mind for us is… sacrificial, intimate, moment-by-moment connection.
The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two.
Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” We know that our togetherness matters to God.
We make each other better. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We remind each other of God and His plans for us. “That you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.” We fight for each other to not be distracted by sin. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” We complete each other. “As it is, there are many parts, but one body.” We need each other to live out the purposes of God. “Each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts.”
Think about it: if God is relationship and He created us for relationship, then guess who hates it? I mean, if deep, loving, intimate connection is God’s goal, then the enemy might hate nothing more than for you and me to enjoy deep, loving, intimate connection!
The enemy wants to divide us. Rather than fighting for each other, he wants to see us fighting against each other.
We are called to be a community of people, on a mission, delighting in God, delighting in each other, redeemed and reconciling the world, bringing them and inviting them into this family. This is the ultimate purpose of community. Yes, it is to encourage you. Yes, it is to comfort you. Yes, it is to fight for you. But ultimately community is meant to open the doors wide to every person on earth and invite them into a family that exists forever with God.
Truly, no one has taught me more about friendship than Jesus, and I hope as we journey together you will see how brilliant and full of life-giving grace He is. Jesus is the best imaginable friend. And He helps us become the same.
Independence has become the chief value in this country. We are brainwashed that “being a self-made woman” (or man), “making our own way,” and striving for “personal achievement” are the goals of our brief, beautiful lives.
And yet the book I base my life on, as well as the God who built us, starts the whole, big story with these two lines: “Let us create man in our image.” “It is not good for man to be alone.”
We learned how to read and write and name the planets, dress ourselves, get a job, and even have sex, but no one ever really sat down and taught us how to make a friend or how to be a friend.
I have fun friends who always make a plan and always make me laugh. I have wise friends who give me advice and call me out. I have encouraging friends who cheer me on and tell me what I’m doing well. I have challenging friends who disrupt my thinking and push back against assumptions I have made or push me to take greater risks. If I expected one or two people to fill all those roles, no one would ever hit the mark. Also true: if I didn’t appreciate the unique roles my friends play in my life, I might be mad that my “challenger” friend doesn’t encourage me more, or my “wise” friend isn’t fun all the time. If I start to see that God has put different people in my life to bless me in different ways, then I can both embrace who they are and rest in what I bring to those relationships.
Somewhere in the transition from hunting and gathering and cooking together to having our groceries delivered to our doorstep or the back of our car, we stopped needing each other. We don’t need each other to survive anymore. We don’t even need to borrow an egg. Or do we?
“The more resources a person gets, the more walls he or she puts up. And the more lonely they become.”
When I slow down and really consider what life looked like back in the Garden of Eden, I see five realities: Proximity. They enjoyed physical closeness to each other and God. Transparency. They were naked and unashamed, fully known and fully loved. Accountability. They lived under submission to God and to each other. Shared Purpose. They were given a clear calling to care for creation. Consistency. They couldn’t quit each other. They needed each other and shared everything together.
These five “tastes of heaven” provide the framework for how we build healthy community in our own lives today.
Nothing in my relational life has helped me more than coming to terms with these simple truths: You will disappoint me. I will disappoint you. God will never disappoint us.
Because our current world has been built on such rampant independence… it will take deliberate intention to return to the kinds of relationships that God had in mind for us to enjoy.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
So here are just a few things you need to know about when God came to earth: Jesus was born into an earthly family, with a mom and a dad and siblings. He grew up in a neighborhood with family friends and other kids. He learned a trade—carpentry—from his dad. He experienced temptation but never sinned. He laughed and learned and sang and grew up in the context of a village. He found His people in unexpected places, not universities or temples. His people were prostitutes, uneducated fishermen, hated tax collectors, children, mothers-in-law. They were often, by any onlooker’s estimation, the wrong ethnicity, the wrong gender, the wrong age, the wrong status, the wrong personality type, the wrong people. Jesus’s people were all wrong—except that they were willing. And they were wanting. And they were all in. That seems to be the only universally clear marker of the small group of people Jesus chose to spend His time with. They were willing. They were wanting. They were all in. You may recall that Jesus made a habit of pushing away crowds and eating with His few. He pushed the crowds away and chose twelve. Within that twelve, there were three He spent the most time with. They were His closest people. The ones He confided in the most. The short version? It’s okay to be selective as we go forward. You will need to be.
This is the endgame of community: we find our people, and together we build safe, beautiful outposts that offer the love of God.
The internet is not your village. Every problem you hear about in the news is not yours to solve.
You and I both desire deep connection. We want someone to know our deepest, darkest secrets and to love us anyway. But that type of community doesn’t come naturally. We have to look for it and then fight to protect it once we have it.
You will never find the perfect people to do life with you, because those people don’t exist. You will always be doing community with sinners.
There are two categories of people I spend my time with: People who need me. People I need. People who need me may not have much to offer in return, but what they can give me isn’t the point. I am there to love them, serve them, and encourage them—that’s it.
Your inner circle is made up of the people who are keeping tabs on you day by day and who know the state of your heart. These are the people you’re going to call to tell about a fight you had with your husband or a difficulty at work or a fear or sin you’ve been battling. My inner circle is made of a handful of people who see me and know me and who are willing to be seen and known by me. They’re imperfect, admittedly. But they’re determined to grow and become more like Christ, and that was the qualifier for me. We aren’t the same age, and we don’t approach all issues the same way, but we share a common pursuit of God. I love God more because of them. And hopefully they would say the same of me.
Availability. Look for people who say yes and show up even with kids in tow, even with a messy house, even before they’ve had a chance to shower. Humility. Look for people willing to say hard things and receive hard things. We need humility to work things out, and growth happens in all our lives only if we aren’t so arrogant that we think we don’t need to change or that the problem is someone else. Transparency. We’ll talk more about this later, but for now, look for someone who refuses to hide, people who will say what’s really going on in their lives. Watch for the ones who will articulate the hard, messy truth rather than a sanitized version that goes down a little easier.
I should mention here that the apostle Paul wasn’t afraid to caution us against aligning with unhealthy people. Paul talked about people we should avoid, those who live as if “their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame.” In other words, people who are comfortable in their sin, people who mistakenly believe that they don’t need to change—those should not be the ones who make up your inner circle.
Instead, choose friends who will fight for you, friends who will fight alongside you, and friends who are as committed as you are to fighting against the dark. Pray for this. Ask God right now for these people. And pray to become this.
God’s idea of community is deep, intentional, day-in and day-out connection, loving at all times, bearing with one another, sticking closer than siblings, naming every sin, running our races together, encouraging each other as long as it is called today.
We’re not meant to learn alone. Or to work alone. Or to do chores alone. Or to relax alone. Or to celebrate alone. Or to cry alone. Or to make decisions alone.
Proximity. Communal fires have been in the center of village life, bringing neighbors together to cook, to celebrate, to gather after dark and connect. Who do you see most often, and where? Transparency. Most of the world has never lived with locked doors and fences. And while that might be a necessity in our homes, it isn’t a necessity in our relationships. Who can you most truly be yourself with? Accountability to Others. In many villages this looks like tribal elders, people who have permission to wallop you over the head when you are being an idiot! Village life causes you to live accountable to others. It isn’t comfortable but it is transformative. Who are you living close to that has permission to wallop you when you need it?
A Shared Purpose. Living together and working together creates bonds and is how most people have lived in community. Who is near you already, working beside you, and how could you bring more purpose to the friendships you already have? Consistency. It takes time to build friendship and connection. We have to clock hours together over years. In Jesus’s time, each school was made up of a small group of boys. We are the most transient generation of all time.
What if we chose to do life in close proximity to each other? What if we lived less guarded and more openhearted with each other? What if we chose people in our lives who challenged us to be better each time we were together? What if we shared a deeper purpose in our relationships? What if we stayed instead of quitting each other when it gets difficult?
Given that we spend most of our days strategizing, planning, working, and following through, there is a natural pull to sit down, to relax, to calm the mind, to chat. A fire gives us a place to do all these things. “Gathering around an evening fire is an important opportunity for calm information exchange,”
Throughout history villages have gathered around fires to cook, to plan, to dance and sing, to be together after the kids are in bed.
Fires bring us together. Real life, face to face, no phones, together.
Five friends in five miles.
The truth is this: we are meant to be emotionally close to the people we are physically close to. Be close to those we’re close to.
Relationships should arise out of your everyday places and your everyday activities. Proximity is a starting place for intimacy.
But we all need a network of regular people who are present in our daily lives.
“Church” was defined as a group of people, not a building for a once-a-week gathering. The Church was a local group of interdependent people who loved God and each other. They did everything together. They ate together, prayed together, encouraged each other, and sold goods so that they could take care of each other. To build a lifestyle in which we are consistently present for one another like this, we need to do three key things. STEP 1: Notice Who Is Already Right in Front of You
Who do you enjoy being around? Who do you share some things in common with? Who seems genuinely interested in you?
STEP 2: Put Yourself Out There
It’s rare that someone will take the initiative in friendship, so quit waiting for that to happen. Everybody is busy, and few people are prioritizing deep connection. In other words, plan to go first.
You will never have friends unless you are willing to consistently initiate.
In the wake of initiating, inviting the person to coffee, being willing to spill my guts, and asking the hard questions, real friendships began to form.
We see enough of Jesus’s life in the Gospels to know that He was an incredible initiator. He noticed people. He stopped for a conversation. He even invited Himself over to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner.
Only five miles separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
Who has God put in your life—here and now and right under your nose—that you haven’t really connected with yet?
The main way my mom shows her love is by inviting my friends and me into her back-porch life.
No one can be your everything, but everyone has something to say, something to teach you, and something to bring to your life.
STEP 3: Start Great Conversations
To have deeper conversations, we have to learn the art of asking more intentional questions.
I honestly think that most people just don’t know how to ask good questions and how to genuinely share their hearts. That’s why conversations often drift toward complaining and gossip. We all know how to do those things!
Build an environment to have great conversations.
And then you invite. You spontaneously but also deliberately and regularly start inviting people in your everyday world. People will say no, and you keep inviting anyway. And then you ask real questions, the kind that make everyone just uncomfortable enough that you might actually get to know them. You go first and volunteer your answers to get things rolling.
Remember, you aren’t the only one craving community. Everyone is craving it. So be the one who makes it happen!
Buy a firepit and invite over friends who live close to your house. Invite a friend to run errands with you. Invite someone at work to walk to the vending machine with you. Who do you see when you are walking your dog? Talk to them and walk together. Note their name (and their dog’s name!) in your phone so you don’t forget it. Introduce yourself to strangers in the coffee shop. Go up to the people sitting by themselves at church and invite them to lunch. If you are new to a city, ask the person next to you at church something like, “Where is the best place to get Thai in Dallas?” And then invite them to join you there for a meal. Take the newest person in your office out to lunch. Ask another family to join yours for celebratory ice cream after your kid’s sporting event. Frequent a restaurant and learn your waiter’s name and ask how you can pray for him. Look for everyday things to do with people. Ask your friend if you can help her fold laundry. If you’re a young mom, go grocery shopping with another young mom. Yes, with all your kids in tow.
Some of my dearest friends live nowhere near me. But the fact remains that I need somebody to bring me a casserole when I am floundering in crisis or stress, and I need someone who can look me in the eyeballs and call me out on what I’m not saying. I need someone who pops in spontaneously, makes me get dressed, and pulls me out to have some fun when I get depressed. And my people need me to do the same for them. So, while I will never lose my longtime, long-distance friends, I can’t function well without friends who live close by. Neither can you.
So even if you have to execute this plan at lightning speed because you won’t be in your current location long, do it. No point in living lonely, even for a year.
Text your friends more than you think you should.
The lesson I’m learning right now is that vulnerability is the soil for intimacy, and what waters intimacy is tears. Real, raw, gut-wrenching honesty about the fight that made you want to leave your spouse last night, or the addiction to pornography or sex that is eating you alive, or the abortion you have never shared, or the small stuff that makes you cry, the anxiety you feel when you think of your kids going to college, or the ache you feel to be married.
Sin required payment, and the price was death. That day He set in motion an answer to it all. He covered the nakedness and shame of Adam and Eve with clothes made from animal skin. It was a picture of the gospel, a promise that one day the blood sacrifice of a Lamb would cover our sins once and for all.
Only when we let down our guards and allow ourselves to be known can we get over ourselves and get on with loving people.
Your whole village doesn’t need to know everything. Only those committed to walking with you through your everyday life and deepest struggles qualify here.
Tell people how to show up for you. And let them express how you can show up for them.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
Ideas for Building Relationships with Transparency: Instead of ordering something on Amazon, try to borrow it from your neighbor instead. Move your firepit or picnic table into the front yard. Talk to people as they walk by and invite them to join you! Invite your neighbors to watch a movie on a projector in your front yard. Ask your safe people to meet up for coffee and prepare them that you want to go deeper. Answer honestly the next time someone asks, “How are you doing?” Call a friend instead of texting her. Even if it’s not a serious call, it gets you talking a little bit more. Ask your friends about the highs and lows of their week. Tell someone you like her. Literally say, “I like spending time with you.” Work without your headphones. Make yourself available. Leave your phone in the car when you meet up with a friend. Ask someone for her advice with something you’re struggling with, even if it’s small.
Scripture says, “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.” The apostle Paul, who penned those words, must have known that, while complaining feels good in the short term, it rarely solves the problem we’re complaining about.
Complaining is usually centered on others rather than acknowledging our own role in the situation. Vulnerability, in comparison, requires humility and an eagerness to grow.
Complaining seeks relief. Vulnerability seeks transformation and connection.
When we are left alone and unbothered, we become the worst version of ourselves. Whether it is neighbors, or mentors, or grandparents, or our closest friends, we need people who see us. Who call us up and out. But we hate words like: Submission. Accountability. Correction. We find the idea of answering to others so uncomfortable that we want to run from it. What if we are running from what we most need—namely, to be caught? To be named, seen, noticed, and corrected is not the norm in our culture, but the Bible talks about it a lot: “If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.” “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” “Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
“As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs says, “so one person sharpens another.”
Choose friends who have the potential to make you better. Then allow them to do just that.
Remember that village life includes friends and mentors and a wider net of people who can speak wisdom into your life, not just your obvious two to three closest. Once you’ve identified your wise and trustworthy friend or friends, here’s how you intentionally pursue accountability: Give permission to this person or people to tell the truth to you. Ask them regularly: What area do you see in my life that I need to grow in? What practices do I need to embrace in order to grow and mature? Will you hold me accountable to this change? Plan a follow-up meeting. Schedule a time when you can revisit this conversation. Ask your friend or friends if you can hold them accountable for anything.
Look for people who will call you up higher, not those who will let things slide.
Because the last thing you and I need are friends who do nothing more than cosign our stupidity.
We not only need people who call out our foolishness, we need people in our lives who are not carbon copies of ourselves. We need to be in community with people of differing ethnicities, backgrounds, perspectives.
But we face a bigger enemy than discomfort when it comes to living accountable: our pride.
Our sin is worse than we imagine. And the grace of God is bigger and better than we can imagine. Accepting both truths sets us free.
Because Scripture says we need this: “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
We may be able to put a Band-Aid on each other’s issues, but what if we pointed our friends to the ultimate Physician instead of our quick fixes? Going to Jesus is where you start to see supernatural life change.
We don’t counsel each other with human wisdom. We point to the Word of God.
Ideas for Finding Accountability: Ask people for advice. This opens up room for them to speak candidly. Remember what your friend tells you. Put prompts on your calendar or in your phone to remind you to pray. Do an overnight retreat with five friends you are getting close with. Give a few trusted people permission to call you out. Get around older women and ask them to show you how to handle a situation. Look for someone approximately fifteen years older than you. Ask her, “What’s one piece of advice you’d give yourself if you were in the same season I’m in?”
Many people overuse the verse “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear” and underuse the verse “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” So let’s be slow to call out other people’s sin, while being quick to ask them to call out our sin.
You want to know one of the biggest problems we face when it comes to friendship? We mistakenly think friendship is about us. But the most satisfying and bonding types of relationships arise when friendship and community are centered on a bigger mission. And guess what? If you’re a follower of Jesus, then: You have a built-in mission no matter your job, neighborhood, hobby, club, or school: share the love of God. You have a village, a team, to pursue that mission with you: your local church.
Work is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish. This pattern is found in all kinds of work. Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art—we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing. Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.
“We have a saying in the Middle East that you don’t know someone until you’ve gone on a trip with them and you’ve eaten with them.
True discipleship isn’t something you do once a week. It’s what you do every day because that’s when you get to know people.
If you want good friends, then run a race together, build a house together, cook a meal together, and do it all while working together for the greatest mission a human can have: giving God away. It isn’t good for anyone to be alone and also isn’t good for man (or woman) to be idle! In the beginning and before the Fall, God gave us each other and then He gave us actual real-life, get-your-hands-dirty work to do.
Here is what the apostle Paul said in 2 Thessalonians: “We hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work.”
“I want to die working beside people I love with dirt under my fingernails.”
Choose the line with the cashier instead of the self-checkout line, look her in the eyes, and talk with her. Put family and people back in your everyday life. And together fight back against this individualistic culture that has intoxicated us into thinking that convenience and personal achievement equal happiness, because they don’t.
Ideas for Pursuing a Mission Together: Join a club. Gardening, tennis, cards, running, biking, volunteering. Go play pickleball, tennis, spikeball. Invite the people on the court to join your game. Host a freezer meal night. Chop and prepare the food together and everyone takes home a few meals! As a small group, sign up for a semester of kids’ ministry duty together, working in the nursery, teaching a class, mentoring teens. Go to fun workout classes. Struggle together, laugh, and get Sonic afterward! Plan a supper club with your neighbors. Cook through a cookbook together! Everyone prepares and brings one recipe. Paint someone’s room, clean out a closet, or plant some flowers together. If you usually work at home by yourself, take your laptop to a coffee shop one morning and invite a friend to sit with you.
If you’re truly busy, there should be opportunities already baked into your life to connect more deeply with people. You just have to view them that way.
Conflict should make friendships, not break them.
“Encourage one another and build each other up.” “Bear one another’s burdens.” “Comfort one another.” “Exhort one another every day.” “Confess your sins to one another.” “Forgive one another.” The Bible is filled with such instructions for how we are to interact with others.
People consistently and regularly come together around food.
Conflict is safe when you know you won’t quit each other.
The apostle Paul went through this with multiple relationships. Paul and Peter worked things out, but they stayed away from each other for the most part. Paul and Barnabas went separate ways, and it ended up serving the gospel. But if you quit, that will mean you start over in finding your people. Guess what? The new people are going to hurt you too. Or you will hurt them. Or both. Because we all do.
How can we have healthy conflict?
1. Assume the Best
2. Keep Short Accounts
3. Be Quick to Apologize
4. Aim to Be a Peacemaker
One reason it’s so hard to have good friends is that getting something on the calendar takes so much work. So first put something regular on your calendar. It takes the work out of this. Schedule it like I did with my friends in Austin. Pick the time and place where you’ll all show up. Second, once you have found your close people, break all the rules of how you spend time together: Purposefully leave your house a mess. Invite someone to your dinner party an hour early to help with prep or ask them to stay late and help you clean up. Leave your laundry out on the couch and ask them to help you fold. Ask if they’ll pick your kid up on their way over. Borrow the ingredient you forgot instead of running to the store to buy it. Bother someone to run the errand with you. Stop by someone’s house unannounced. Bring someone a meal without warning. Ask to borrow clothes for a special event instead of shopping for a new dress. Ask someone to help you clean out your closet. Offer to help someone paint a room. Ask to join someone else’s family dinner.
The University of Oxford evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar said our relational spheres comprise layers of people who fall into categories such as acquaintances, casual friends, friends, good friends, and intimate friends. But what was groundbreaking about his work was the fact that he put numbers to those categories. While we can maintain roughly 150 meaningful relationships at a time, he suggested only fifty of those people would be considered “friends” and only five would be considered “intimate friends.” Inspired by Dunbar’s research, University of Kansas professor Jeffrey Hall began poking around at those various relational layers: How did a meaningful relationship move from being a casual friend, say, to a friend? What type of investment was needed for this transition to occur? How long would it take? The results of the research he dove into are fascinating to me. As reported in Psychology Today, “He found that it took about 50 hours of interaction to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to move from casual friend to friend, and more than 200 hours to qualify as a best friend.”
Ideas for Embracing the Inconvenience of Friendship: Who in your friend group needs to be supported? Organize a way for everyone to do something nice for that person. Reach out to a friend who is pulling away from you and/or God, someone who is isolating herself. Take over a meal and check on her. Ask your friend to pray together with you. Let go of minor offenses and truly move on. Don’t gossip when you have been wronged. Pray about a hurt you experience before talking through it with your friend. Be the one who says, “I feel like things aren’t right between us. Is there anything we should talk through?” After you have reconciled, or if you’ve chosen to simply let go of a hurt, treat your friend normally the next time you see her. Send a casual, lighthearted text about something you can do together.
You’d share meals with these people. You’d do chores with these people. You’d raise children with these people. You’d labor with these people. You’d entertain dreams with these people. You’d swap stories with these people. You’d work through disagreements with these people. You’d celebrate wins with these people. You’d grieve disappointments with these people. You’d welcome new babies with these people. You’d bury loved ones with these people. You’d do all the stuff of life with these people.
“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community,”
Perhaps you’ve heard of confirmation bias, which is when you find in the world exactly what you expect to find. Confirmation bias works here too. If you expect to find beauty in your family relationships, you will find beauty. If you expect to find support, then you will find support. If you expect to find acceptance, then you will find acceptance. If you expect to find friendship, then nine times out of ten, guess what? You will find a friend.
I want you to walk away from this book committed to prioritizing that community over better job offers, more square footage, or a cooler city. I want you to see God’s vision for healthy relationships and to choose that above comfort or easy, shallow conversations or occasional convenient meetups. I want you to not only find your inner circle but to find a village where you can know and serve and be served and known.
Scripture says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” This is the battle we’re in. We must remember this.
Investing in relationship is not about pursuing our own happiness. It’s not just so that we can have friends to go to dinner with when we feel lonely. It’s so that we can be effective for eternity. It’s so that people will come to know Christ because of our love. It’s so that our love would speak so boldly and clearly of Jesus that it would be contagious, that it would cause other people to want to follow God.
When you have an extreme reaction to something, you need to pay attention because it’s probably evidence of something or someone you’ve made into an idol. When you are unusually upset that a person didn’t call or that person wasn’t loving enough toward you or didn’t invite you to something, ask yourself, Am I putting unfair expectations on this person to meet my needs?
“As believers we are quick to focus on all the Bible verses that tell us to love the Lord and surrender our selfish desires and read the Bible and so forth, while at the same time totally neglecting the ones about being careful to guard our hearts, as Proverbs 4:23 says to do. But without guarding our hearts, we will be no use to anyone. Any relationship that drains you faster than it pours into you isn’t a friendship; it’s a ministry opportunity.”
Own your part and your mistakes. Seek reconciliation multiple times. Don’t be afraid to move on if nothing ever changes. When you know it’s time to move on from a friend, I challenge you to be honest and clear, not just ghost them. Sometimes, it’s not a close enough friend to warrant that conversation. But if this friend has been a big part of your life, someone that you have trusted and gone deeper with, say the hard thing that needs to be said. An honest conversation about why the friendship needs to end could propel them to recognize where they need to grow and change. It might even repair the friendship.
Becoming and finding life-giving friends is the goal, and the path to reaching that goal is fairly straightforward: Ask deep questions. Listen. Tell people what you are grateful for in them. Share the real stuff. Talk about Jesus. Do fun stuff together.
Here are just a few of the self-defeating traps we lay for ourselves: Wait for friends to call you. Be easily offended by your friends. Have lots of opinions about your friends’ lives. Assume your friends are mad. Talk negatively about your friends. Don’t share your hurts. Remember and hold on to friends’ mistakes.
Whom do you need to make amends with? Whom have you given up on too easily or quickly? Whom have you pushed away? Whom have you ghosted? You may have isolated yourself from the very things God wants to use to help you grow.
Another friend of mine says that she tries to react to patterns, not one-offs. Everyone messes up every now and then; unless a friend is habitually disregarding or demeaning you, let it go. Choose to move on.
I’m convinced that this type of communal grief and communal joy is what knits hearts together for the long haul. When you’ve entered into another person’s celebration or another person’s pain—I don’t mean anecdotally, but rather truly entered in—no longer do you bother with boundaries and barriers.
When I pray for your family, I pray like I’m praying for mine.
He calls you His friend: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” That longing we have to be fully known, fully accepted, on mission, seen, loved, not alone—it is wholly answered in Him. Jesus is my best friend.
“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”