THE GIFT OF COMMUNITY

Meredith Den Engelsen, Young Adults Associate

Jesus had his people. He walked with the twelve disciples and had an inner circle of closest friends. He ate with them, prayed with them, and spent most of his day-to-day life with them. Paul spends so much of his letters encouraging the believers to support, teach, serve, and love one another. In the first few chapters of the book of Acts, Luke describes a body of believers who devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, ate meals together, prayed together, and shared everything. The Church should include community.

I joined RockPointe’s Young Adults after attending Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Bible school in Australia. I finished the program with a hunger and passion for the Word I honestly never had prior. I joined Crave Bible study and spent my first year of university studying the Bible twice a week with a small group of young adults at 6:30 a.m. I am a morning person, but this Bible study was a whole other level. Luckily, we often piled into a corner booth at Denny’s on Thursday mornings to eat breakfast, discuss what we were learning, and just hang out. I quickly learned RockPointe Young Adults was a group with a hunger to learn and a dedication to each other.

YA ministry has grown to include Gatherings (our primary place of teaching and community), game nights, Bible studies, a girls’ group, a guys’ group, book club, serve opportunities, and worship nights. After many of these events, we still often find ourselves chatting for hours at the closest McDonald’s or Denny’s, still not sick of each other. I love that we love each other. We go to each other's baptisms, grads, and weddings. We try to celebrate with each other as we should. We know who is waiting to hear about school applications and job opportunities, and we pray. We are learning to discuss topics like sexuality, evolution, and justice with each other. Many of us hold different views, but we can process them together and discuss how God fits into these, often divisive, topics. We allow each other to ask hard questions and push each other to keep learning and wrestling.

This group of amazing people has been family to me through difficult times of anxiety, job loss, uncertainty, broken relationships, and wrestling through hard questions in my faith. While we are far from perfect, God has blessed us with an amazing community, and He will continue to speak and work through it.

I understand the struggle of finding community when you are new, alone, or struggling with anxiety. We've all felt that fear and awkwardness. We are by no means experts at building the perfect community. Our young adult lead team has been discussing this blind spot and how we can be more welcoming and approachable to new people. Sometimes we get too distracted by hearing our friends’ life updates to take note of the new people in the room. But this is something we want to work on.

Romans 12:15-18 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

I encourage you to think about the ways God is blessing you through your community. Do you have a place where you can be vulnerable and learn in humility alongside others? Who are your people? Are you celebrating each other and weeping with each other? What are you learning from those people? And how can you welcome people into that community, or invite others into your life and create a community?