Happy Accidents in a Common Place
Becoming the Great Us, Featured — By David Zimmerman on November 4, 2009 at 12:00 am
I occasionally wonder about the damage that can be done by the careless appeal to “community.” I was, for a while, a member of a church that defined itself by community, and which defined community as “people doing life together.” This was what true friendship was meant to be: you could call someone at 2 in the morning and be reasonably assured that they would answer and attend to whatever urgency you presented them with—a ride to the airport, an intervention into a domestic dispute, change for a dollar, whatever.
My wife and I loved that definition of community, I don’t mind telling you. We set out doggedly to “do life together” with whatever small group of people we got assigned to based on our age, our marital status, our number of children, our level of education, our gross domestic product, whatever. We circled up and asked open-ended, probing questions about one another’s lives, and then we’d pray and eat snacks and talk about Jesus till our time was up. And eventually our small group would disband.
Sometimes it disbanded because people moved; our demographic was relatively transient. Sometimes it disbanded because a tipping point’s worth of people changed demographics: a couple would marry or divorce, a couple would have their first baby or their second or third, someone would (gasp!) turn thirty. Sometimes we’d discover that we’d fallen into a rut and that the best way forward was to re-group—to more finely subdivide our demographic, or to separate according to natural affinity or geographical location. Sometimes we’d realize that none of us ever needed to call anybody at 2am, and none of us was particularly interested in fielding such calls anyway.
“Doing life together” is a catchy phrase that takes the high view of community in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic book Life Together—written for a secret seminary under the nose of the Nazis, and built on the foundation of Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity”—and sexes it up for the Friends era (“I’ll be there for you when the rain starts to fall . . . ‘cause you’re there for me too”). Whereas “life together” is a plainspoken, commonplace term, “doing life” is a contrivance—two words that don’t naturally run together, like “God thing” or “soul mate.” It’s worth noting that the Friends era ended in 2004, while Life Together hasn’t gone out of print since it was first published in 1939.
By contrast, Peter Rollins of the Ikon Collective in Belfast, Ireland, tells Christian Century that he refuses to call his gatherings a “community.” Once you declare yourself as such, he observes, “the group turns incredibly needy, and suddenly the whole thing is on its way to vanishing. The best way to forge community is not to call it a community. . . . Ikon will never notice if you don’t come. But if you’ve made a connection with the person next to you, that person might.”
That, I think, is closer to the heart of what Bonhoeffer was chasing in his book. Community, he writes, “will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis.” Community isn’t manufactured, in other words, it’s discovered and then cultivated in a common place.
We find ourselves in a church, for example, and we might find ourselves there week in and week out with no tether beyond our sense that we should be part of a church and that preaching and worship and doughnuts and whatnot should be something we endure. Then, perhaps one week during the passing of the peace, we find someone to befriend, and afterward we grab lunch or trade business cards or whatever, and the nature of our experience within the church changes. It’s a happy accident, really, that we gradually come to dwell together—not necessarily in the same house but in a shared life. It’s the sort of happy accident that is best described in plainspoken, commonplace terms such as “good and pleasant.”
Of course, this happy accident might never have taken place if the ritual of meeting together for worship and preaching and doughnuts and whatnot had not been established and committed to. Rollins would not be inclined to call Ikon a church any more than he’d call it a community, but his description of the one is a helpful way of thinking about the other: “Ikon [or the church] is like the people who run a pub. It’s not their responsibility to help the patrons become friends. But they create a space in which people can actually encounter each other.”
Look past the hype that so many people assign to community—the promise of life done together, of friends that won’t screen your calls, of needs perpetually met—and you’ll find that community is first and always a happy accident, one that we are nevertheless responsible to look for, prepare for, and cultivate when we discover it.
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19 Comments
Happy accidents…yes…amen…a hearty amen!
Thanks, Dave.
Thanks for your perspective. I really appreciated this essay.
I have often thought along the same lines as you: groups that are consciously put together or “manufactured” feel artificial. I tend to feel resentful when my church tries to throw me into a group and expect me to bond with the people I’m thrown together with. It doesn’t feel natural. And then I’m made to feel guilty that I don’t “click” with my group. I tend to feel as you do – that relationships are best when they’re “happy accidents” – they’re organic and natural, not contrived.
But the most common argument I get against my way of thinking is that if the church doesn’t step in and place people in communities, some individuals will get left out. “Cliques” will form and the less likable will get left by the wayside.
I’m not sure what to make of this. Ought we to forge conscious communities so that the less popular can have a place to belong? Is it true that some people don’t ever end up with “happy accidents”? I feel terrible saying that the people who aren’t good at making friends shouldn’t get to belong to a group. So I resentfully agree to the church-made communities. Which doesn’t sound much better.
I also was unclear, in your essay, on the “damage” that “careless appeals to community” can have. Is it that “the group turns incredibly needy, and suddenly the whole thing is on its way to vanishing”? Are you basically saying that as soon as we try to forge “community” we are working to dismantle that very community?
Thanks for your thoughts! What a different perspective from the usual.
Good Lord I needed this.
Good article.
One question: are the guys in the picture (the ones huddled in a circle) a forced community or were they a happy accident?
A while ago, a group of happy accidents started meeting together on Sunday mornings in my home to talk about Jesus and do something with our Jesus-talk. We have shied away from calling it anything or dolling out jobs or positions. Jesus seems to be our defining factor and that’s just fine with us.
I am wondering if you are getting at the issue of church as place vs. church as people. You make a notable shift when you talk about people who are coming to a common meeting place out of duty becoming friends. You say our whole experience of church changes at this point.
I would agree that manufactured community will begin deteriorating almost as soon as it is formed. If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to ask for some clarification on a few points. If organic relationships are nothing more than coincidental meetings brought out of duty and manufactured community is inevitably domed, but the act of befriending another is a defining moment in church experience…what exactly are you saying? You say we are to cultivate community when we find it, but should look past the idea of needs being perpetually met.
When I look to the church in Acts, I see, not a perfect group of people, but a community of believers put together because of their faith (maybe not exactly with things in common), sharing everything, living together and becoming deeply dependant and needy, not only on Christ, but one another. When Christ asks me to carry another’s burden, I try my best to take that all the way. Perhaps you could explain how your article fits in with some of the ideas I’ve mentioned. Or, perhaps I have missed the boat and misunderstood your work. If that is the case, please forgive me.
perhaps the idea of community you are talking about was not too strong but it was too weak.
“happy accidents” might sound good as long as you don’t really care all that much about meeting people, or you already have your friends and your life and you don’t really worry about the people who are awkward and can’t really connect with people in contrived social settings.
please forgive me if i am sounding too critical. i just don’t really see this view of “community” being in any way biblical–though the type you describe at the beginning may not be any more itself. i think they both miss the point.
I share the sentiments of the author of this essay. I hate the forced community. Rarely do we find real friends when forced.
At the same time, I have similar questions as Kathleen. Christianity seems to require us to not only love our enemies, but to befriend those we don’t get along with naturally. It is easy to be welcoming to those we gel with, but more is required from us.
Bonheoffer’s book sounds great, but happy accidents are rare in our individualistic society. Structure (generally speaking) is not inherently bad. It often gets in the way of authenticity, but it often enables and promotes it as well. As you say, authentic community often occurs because we are already meeting at church or in small groups. I have been in groups in which we were obligated to share our darkest secrets. This is not necessary, and possibly quite damaging. At the same time, it is good for us to be pushed beyond where we feel comfortable.
For a number of years I fought against structure and awkward social obligation in Christianity, but in the last few years I have been seeking it because I have become isolated. This was compounded by the fact that I moved from the church of my youth to Chicago, and then to Portland, within a span of a few years. My wife and I failed to find happy accidents for a long time. It was difficult finding a church where we felt like we fit in well enough to even want to try to be involved with the community. We felt spiritually and emotionally deprived. After a few years in Portland we did begin finding relationships to meet these needs at Imago, but I doubt that we would have found them if we had not taken the responsibility to “look for, prepare for, and cultivate” them at Imago. We were there for a long time before we even tried. Imago was not ideal, but we realized we needed something.
In the end I think I agree with the author. Is it fair to say you (David Zimmerman) have overstated your position that forced community should be replaced by happy accidents?
Thank you. I hope this can be a starting point for great discussion, and hopefully many happy-accidents.
I thought this essay was so good! Thanks!
thank you, thank you, thank you
Hey all: You’re raising great points, and highlighting the fact that this essay, like all entries in Becoming the Great Us, are works in progress. Tonight I’ll try to clean up whatever ambiguity I left in the essay, respond to critiques and questions, and maybe force myself to tease out some more implications from this provisional idea. Thanks for all the food for thought–my brain is stuffed, even if my tummy is currently empty.
The emphasis on community, both in the church and in this article, seems to take precedence over learning about God, growing closer to Him, and doing His work. Community is certainly important, but the point of community within the church is to help one another, not just with rides to the airport, but more importantly on our spiritual walk. Both the happy accident and the intentional small-group seem self-serving. We need to be community to others. For ourselves, we need to not just seek out people within a certain demographic, but to form relationships in which we are mentored and relationships in which we mentor others. I think community and friendship fail so often because they are self-serving, founded on a list of likes and dislikes, and whether we click or not, rather than on higher principles. That said, I don’t think we should feel guilty for not clicking with an artificial demographic, but rather we need to think whether God has placed us in that community for a reason or whether there’s a different community that we should be part of.
EXCELLENT essay.
Here’s a long, ponderous response to some of the well-considered pushback above. I apologize for the length and welcome further feedback.
Several people rightly observed that a church may make people sit together, even talk together, even eat together, even do life together, but it’s God who brings people together: through divine appointment, through the gathering of his flock, through such sacraments as birth, baptism, communion, marriage, death. To the extent that we come to rely on a church program or database to feed us friendship, we’re numbed to the more subtle, more organic relationships that God is cultivating for us.
I agree wholeheartedly that relationships aren’t a commodity to be consumed, hoarded or negotiated. Relationships are too human for that. Relationships are a trust, a covenant. To the degree that we trade in relationships we betray the gift that they are. God said it’s not good for the man to be alone, and so he introduced human community to the creation. When we find ourselves surrounded by people who are very like us, we shouldn’t be terribly surprised. But when we find ourselves entering into meaningful relationship with another person, we should marvel at the miracle. C. S. Lewis was right: demographics may be dreadfully boring, but people are marvelous.
So what do we do in place of consuming prepackaged, predictable relationships, on the one side, and enduring frustration at the seeming dearth of potential friends, on the other? And what role ought the church to play in the cultivation of real relationship?
Well, I think our challenge is train ourselves in alertness, in assertiveness, in hospitality, in hope. And I think the church—as klu pointed out, a people rather than a place—is responsible to train itself in those four things as well. I often think of the first encounter of Adam and Eve. Alertness was a stretch for both: Adam has only recently undergone rib-removal under heavy sedation, and Eve has only recently been fashioned out of the dust of the earth. Adam asserts himself by naming Eve and accepting her into the human community, which has just doubled in size. Eve, simultaneously, asserts her humanness, willingly enters into Adam’s reality and embraces God’s mandate to the human community to steward God’s creation. Without the active participation of both, there is no human community, and each is still alone, which God has already decreed is not good.
Hospitality is likewise a key ingredient of the kind of happy accident that we keep alert for and cultivate when we find it. And hospitality—the openness of one to another—is the discipline that guards us against cliquishness and homogeneity. We assume a posture of being ready to receive another, and artificial constraints against that reception—ethnicity, economics, personality type, intellect, appearance, whatever—self-evidently violate our prior commitment to being open to the other. I’d argue that manufactured gatherings, from small groups to church services themselves, have the potential to subvert this eminently Christian discipline.
And finally, hope—a resolute attempt to see beyond the immediate to the potential. Hope kept Martin Luther King talking to the White Citizens Councils in the segregated south; hope kept Paul writing letters to churches behaving badly. With hope we can take risks in relationship, risks that have often been systematically minimized and sterilized in manufactured gatherings.
Alertness, assertiveness, hospitality and hope are never necessarily our first instincts, which is why we need to train ourselves in them, and why the church would do better if it would reallocate its resources from small group database software into helping, challenging, commanding and empowering people to grow in these areas. Happy accidents are all around us because every place is a common place, because the earth was established for the people of God. And they’re all around us because all the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof—no matter how common.
Of course, as is my custom, I’m making this all up as I go along.
Thanks for the clarification. You seem to be saying that instead of manufacturing community groups to make sure that everyone has a place, the church should encourage its members to cultivate proper attitudes so that relationships happen organically. I like that. It sounds . . . better. More realistic and genuine. I don’t know if I’m summing up your thoughts properly, but I think I get what you’re saying. And I like it. Thanks. I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot in the last day since you posted the original article.
I am digging your view on hope and hospitlity. Beautiful and smart. Thank you for your very thoughtful response. You answered my questions.
It seems like, on a really basic level, it’s a balance issue. Obviously, it would be great if people were outgoing and welcoming and healthy community was totally organic. Sometimes it happens, and we should embrace it. But, the world is a broken place, and part of what is broken is our ability to love each other well, accept people that stretch us beyond comfort, and step out in spite of our fears and insecurities. For those reasons, it can be very beneficial to have a structure and a system of “doing life together”. However, we can’t lose sight of the fact that it is a training tool, rather than an end unto itself. They artificially force us to endure and maintain and expand our minds and horizons, in the hopes that we will learn to organically be willing to welcome and grow and stick it out. The recoiling comes when we forget. Then they become something weird and even ugly. Fake little cliques that help everyone involved deceive themselves while pushing them in the opposite direction that they were intended to go. When that happens, it isn’t because all “community” is bad. It’s because we’ve perverted it and turned into the worst manifestation of itself by trying to make it something it was never meant to be.
so how do you integrate being intentional and authentic? If you just hope it happens naturally, it probably wont happen. Its the age old freedom within boundaries thing. how can you foster an organic community? or its that contradictory?