Everybody wants a village

Like all good millennials who are rapidly approaching their 40s, I have recently taken up one the of the assigned millennial hobbies—running. My husband and I have started running together several times a week, and alongside this we attend our local Parkrun on Saturday mornings. 

One of the things I have discovered about running is that it is quite an individual activity. You set the pace and the distance, and there are long runs that are full of you, you and more you. And start talking to anyone who doesn’t run, and you risk losing them somewhere between the words tempo and cadence— have I lost you yet?!

Parkrun runs counter to this. At our local event, roughly 100–120 people gather every Saturday. The start line is chaos. There are dogs barking loudly, prams covering the footpaths, and of course the hundred or so other people who are all starting at the same time. 

The start is called, and suddenly you are trying to find a comfortable position within the pack. One must manoeuvre politely past the slow runners and walkers, sidestep the curious dogs and attempt to navigate around the parents pushing prams. All of them are obstacles, potentially costing precious seconds on a Personal Best. 

On my last run—somewhere between the giant unavoidable puddle and just before the hill of death— I had a realisation. Despite all the obstacles, my times are always faster at Parkrun. 

There is a funny phenomenon that happens when we run with other people. Research suggests that people run an average of five seconds faster per kilometre when running alongside others. That may not sound like much, but it adds up. 

And I believe that small difference points towards something much bigger. Doing life with other people is often inconvenient, but paradoxically, we become better for it. 

The ordinary inconvenience

The fact that we need community is not particularly revelatory. We know that loneliness is a significant problem in modern society. We talk often about the importance of connection, belonging and finding ‘our people’. We and our kids are encouraged to find our tribe, build our networks and surround ourselves with people who make us feel seen. 

And these are good things. But I wonder whether we have overlooked something.

We all want the village. Very few of us want to be the villager. Because being a part of a community sounds wonderful until we discover what community costs us. 

It is often inconvenient, time-consuming and can lead to frustration. It means being accountable to people who we may not like very much. It means showing up when we would rather stay home. In short, community introduces friction. And friction is hard. 

Modern life, especially for our kids’ generation, has become remarkably good at removing this friction for us. So much of our world can now be accessed from the comfort of our own homes. We can work remotely, shop and order food without a word spoken, and we can maintain our relationships on our own terms through a screen. 

These things in and of themselves are not bad, but when we and our kids become accustomed to having life arranged around our preferences, the ordinary inconvenience of other people can start to feel like a problem to be avoided rather than a reality to be embraced. 

And Christianity offers a profoundly different picture of what it means to belong to a community. Jesus did not call us to simply ‘find our people.’ He called us to follow him, and in doing so, we become a part of his family, his community. And that’s the kind of radical community that I want my kids to grow up in.

The paradoxical gift

The New Testament describes the church as a body. We are all different, and yet we belong to one another. An eye cannot decide it would be more comfortable without the hand, and the hand cannot decide that the foot is far too annoying to have around. 

The point isn’t that everyone makes our lives easier. The point is that we need one another.

And this is another paradoxical gift of the Christian community: the people who inconvenience us are also the people through whom God shapes us. 

Community gives us opportunities to practise patience. To forgive. To serve. To offer our gifts when nobody is applauding. To love others who may not be able to offer us anything in return. 

These things are not interruptions on our way to being more like Jesus, they are the things that will make us more like him.

This is why being a villager is important.

*Promote ‘Parenting in God's Family Volume 1' here*

The responsibility of belonging

We see this in the way we raise our children. When they are young, they receive everything from adults. As they grow, we teach them that belonging to a family means contributing to it. They learn to help, to carry responsibility and learn to care for others, despite how they may feel. And the same is true of us.

We never outgrow our need for community, but neither do we outgrow our responsibility to contribute to it. Christian community isn’t a place where we come simply to have our needs met. It is a place where we bring what God has given us and use it for the good of others. Villages are built from small acts of faithfulness. 

Of course, being a villager doesn’t mean having no boundaries. Healthy community isn’t about allowing ourselves to be endlessly drained by others. Sometimes love means saying no. Sometimes love means encouraging someone to take responsibility for themselves rather than continually rescuing them. Boundaries can be an expression of love when they are shaped by a desire for healthy, mutual relationships rather than simple self-protection. 

To live well in community will always cost something. And that is exactly what makes it valuable. 

Jesus never promised a frictionless life. Instead, he called his followers to love one another, serve one another, forgive and bear with one another. 

So find a community. Go to church. Join a small group. Go to Parkrun. And bring your kids along for the ride! 

Serve where you can. Bring the gifts you’ve been given and use them for somebody else’s benefit. Because you can’t have the village without the villager. 

And who knows?

You might even get a Personal Best.

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Kate Thompson is an aspiring novelist and baby theologian. When Kate isn't constructing worlds of her own, she can be found reading the classics (not the boring ones) to her girls or trotting around the globe, with or without her family.

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