Serial Community

This February I will have live in the same apartment for the past 2 1/2 year. I realize that it is the longest that I have lived in one place sense moving to Boston. Being in one place has had some amazing benefits. I feel closer to my neighborhood, understand it better, and feel more love for those around me that I have anywhere else in Boston. It has also allowed me to question the previous expressions of Christian Community that I have experienced in the past.

For the past say 5-6 year I have been seeking out christian community. To varying degrees I have been successful. My living situations have exhibited serving each other, hospitality, prayer, confession, worship and common finances. However looking back I realize that I have missed an important aspect.

They have not exhibited commitment to each other. For the most part the communities that I have lived in have lasted, on average, one year. For that year we were committed to each other but there was always something that could easily separate us. For the most part we were in our early to mid twenties. I think the upper-ward mobility / wanderlust of 20 somethings caused a feeling of being unsettled after a year in one place. Frequently, people move to another city for a job. Sometimes people had other friends that they became more connected and wanted to move in with. And then there was always marriage.

Not that any of these things are bad, or that people are choosing them over community. But there is an underlying understanding that what ever community we built would not last for very long. They were unstable.

What would a community look like if people committed themselves to relationship with each other and their neighbors. If they intentionally chose to live in the same place even though there were better opportunities elsewhere. What if instead of people leaving a community because of marriage someone new joined the community.

Over the past few year I realize that I have been practicing serial community.