the three stages of committing to a community
“People enter community to be happy. They stay when they find happiness comes in making other people happy.” — Jean Vanier
One of the hardest, yet most important, tasks of your life is finding and joining the right communities. Whether it’s at school, church, or just a group of friends, choosing and committing healthy communities will make or break your life. Too often young people either join the wrong communities or give up on the right ones too soon, leading to unnecessary hurt, bitterness or scars.
That’s why it’s important to understand the three main steps to joining a community; if you’re unaware of this process, you’ll likely bounce around from community to community, frustrated that you can’t find the perfect one for you.
stage 1: the idealization phase: you’ve found your dream community!
The first stage of joining a community is the idealization phase. After bouncing around and trying different communities, you finally stumble across your dream one. You’ve finally found the friend group, workplace, or church community that gets who you are and the kind of person you want to become.
These people are like you but even better, and exactly the kind of person you imagined spending your twenties around. They wear similar clothes, enjoy the same activities, and are passionate about the same causes as you are. You can’t believe you’ve finally find the perfect community!
During this phase, you find yourself saying phrases to yourself like:
I never thought I’d find a community like this!
I’ve finally found a group of people who get me!
These people are incredible; they care about all the things I do and more!
With these people in my life, I’m going to be able to live the dream life I always imagined.
Life in this new community is great, and you can’t wait to see what the future holds for and your new friends!
stage 2: the disintegration phase: your bubble is burst
Many young people join a community expecting stage 1 to last forever. But it doesn’t. It’s actually just the honeymoon phase, when everything feels perfect and you haven’t had any fights, yet. This honeymoon phase of community will last from a few months to a few years, but eventually it will give way to stage 2 of community life, the disintegration phase.
This happens because during the idealization phase, you were so enamored with your new community’s strengths, you assume that just because you couldn’t see any weaknesses, they must not exist. But given enough time, every community will start to show weaknesses and flaws.
Why does this always happen? Because every community is broken, since it’s made up of broken people. And as you spend more time around them, you’ll become more aware of the community’s brokenness. Eventually, someone will do something that hurts you or someone you care about. Whether that’s an insensitive comment, a harmful action, or a decision you disagree with, you’ll find yourself at odds with your once ‘perfect’ community.
“It’s not supposed to be like this!” is the common phrase of this stage. Many young people are shocked by this stage. They thought this community was the utopia they were looking for, and now, after having observed or experienced its shortcomings, they feel hurt and betrayed by the community, especially by the leaders.
The initial sheen of the community is long gone, and now you feel tired, disappointed, and let down, by part or all of your community. They aren’t meeting your needs to the degree you expected, and you begin to wonder: did I choose the wrong community? During stage 1 you saw everyone as saints, but now they all look like demons.
At this point, many young people leave the community, hurt, angry, and feeling burned. “I must have joined the wrong community!” they assume, and restart their quest for the ‘perfect’ one. And so the cycle repeats itself over and over: idealization and disintegration, until they eventually give up, either disengaging from community as a whole, or only joining ones so large (like a megachurch) that they never have meaningful contact with others.
stage 3: the commitment phase: staying when things get hard
But if you ever want to have a healthy community life, you have to fight through the urge to leave during stage 2, and enter into stage 3: committing to a group of people, despite its imperfections and flaws.
David Brooks defines a commitment as “making a promise to something without expecting a reward.” This is crucial. It’s so easy to view community transactionally, always asking, “What will this community give me?” But commitment only happens with you move from thinking transactional approach to a servant-hearted mindset: how can I serve this community?
This switch in how you approach your community will only happen, though, when you begin to realize:
This community is broken not just in spite of me, but rather because of me.
You’re not all of the problem, of course, but you’re part of it for sure. And if you keep jumping from community to community in search of the perfect one, you’ll always be disappointed, because you’ll never be able to escape your own flaws and weaknesses that you contribute to every group. At some point, you have to commit to a community. Not because it’s perfect and not because it will give you your dream life, but rather because this is the place where God wants you to work through your own junk.
If you just stay in a community to fix other people, though, it won’t change. Why? Because you can only change yourself, and if everyone’s busy pointing out the other person’s flaws, no one will ever think they need to change, and so nothing will happen. The only way to see a community grow is not by pointing out other people’s flaws, but by coming alongside each other in weakness and grace as you encourage each other towards healthier behavior.
can i ever leave a community?
You’re probably wondering at this point: then can I ever leave a community? Of course. While it’s good to commit to your communities, there are times when it’s wise to move on. A few of these times are:
Toxic communities: while every community has problems, toxic communities are ones where their problems affect and degrade everyone’s lives to such a degree nothing healthy can grow. It’s often better to let these communities die on their own accord, rather than getting sucked into the mess.
Hardened hearts: while every community has problems, be careful in the ones where the leadership or key members won’t admit that something’s wrong, much less do anything to change it. Leaders with hardened hearts will deny that any problem exists, and will usually insist that the only problem is you, for having the nerve to bring up the issue. While you shouldn’t flippantly move on, sometimes communities are not ready to change in ways they need to.
God’s leading: Sometimes God will lead you to be a part of a difficult or even dangerous community and make it a part of your call to serve him there. But if you feel no leading or call from God to serve in that way, it may be wise to reevaluate if this is a good place for you to invest.
conclusion:
God uses communities to bring people of different backgrounds and giftings together to serve him and work through their sin. While it’s okay to explore different communities in order to find where God would have you live and serve, be careful that you don’t get caught in a never-ending cycle between community idealization and disintegration, always looking for a utopia on earth. God wants you to find a community and commit and invest in it, and promises to bless you and grow you through the difficult yet joyful work of living life together.
