Community: Not just friends

In Small Town, Midwest we (eventually) found ourselves at a wonderful church plant- just big enough to feel like a church, just small enough you could conceivably know everyone. We liked the service, but we were sold when the pastor welcomed us, chatted about our church background, and recommended several other churches we might check out if we wanted to look around more.

To be honest, the members were so friendly we were actually a little put off- someone invited us to lunch our first day there, and we turned them down. (Midwestern hospitality- it's a thing. We weren't ready yet.) Soon after, another couple with three young kids invited us to get together, and I was a little unsettled when I realized they had actually gotten a babysitter- for the first time ever- just to meet us for coffee one evening. Once we realized they were in fact normal (for the midwest) and just being friendly, we really grew to like that community. That lovely family that got a babysitter were our best friends there! (Fun fact: I'm eternally grateful my first "mom friend" was on her third child and not her first.) Now that we have young kids ourselves and know their situation a little better, it all makes perfect sense.

Since we left the area about 18 months after we found that church (during which we had a difficult pregnancy and new baby), we didn't ever get to know everyone in the church- but we joined a small group and were varying levels of close with several other families. We did play dates and met downtown and exchanged advice and gave recommendations and had dinner and prayed- together and for one another. A picture taken at our last meeting shows rumpled parents and children either wild-eyed and crazy or sleepy and fussy, and we kept it on our fridge for two years.

We were so sad to move away from that community, and we never found one like it in our next location. Even though we had almost the same number of close friends there, they didn't know each other- and so it didn't have the same sense of community. Recommendations didn't trickle back in when word got around that you were looking for a good place to take your parents for dinner. You didn't hear that someone's baby was sick and that's why they weren't there this week. We had a "small group" with one other couple, but if one of us was traveling- which happened frequently- that was it, there was no meeting. There were no group dynamics.

I think maybe we were meant to live in small towns*, and the isolation modern life isn't as healthy for us. Whether or not that sense of community is a universal desire, it has always been precious to me, ever since my first strong group of friends in high school.

 *(I will say I found actual small town life very difficult. Breaking into a close community is a whole other post!)