Community is a treasured word that is hard to find. In our inner city community, we are fortunate enough to have a good number of believing families who have relocated to the inner city. Still, one of the major complaints I hear from my fellow labourers is the hardship of loneliness.
Here are a few tips to help build community (and it does take effort) among like-minded people in your community:
1. Prayer meetings/prayer walks
Praying together is an intimate event and one of the more powerful ways to remain united in ministry
2. Potlucks and shared meals
Breaking bread together, or sharing meals, features largely throughout the Bible, yet seems too simplistic. If you do nothing else, eat a meal together once in a while! Regular potlucks, buying a pizza once in a while, or having a dessert night is simple to organize and worth doing. If you want, go bigger. In one season, where our area was being hit particularly hard with discouragement, one family rented a hall and hosted a "feast." They invited any Christians living and serving in our neighbourhood. Again and again people thought they were being naive by making such big arrangements, since it seemed like most people had left the area. On the day of the event, over 50 believers gathered together! It was beautiful to see how shocked everyone was to realize they were not alone!
3. Social events (movie or games nights)
Laughing together is also a wonderful stress-reliever and community builder. Whether it's an informal games night at your house, or showing a movie at the drop-in for leadership only, or something more involved, taking time to have fun together is worth it! In our community, it seems informal doesn't work well, but on occasion we'll do something big (like visit the children's museum or carpool to get to the beach) where we can get group discounts or offer rides to people when we go as a larger group.
4. Conferences and Workshops
It is worth attending a conference/workshop together on occasion. If you have to travel for it, even better. We have sometimes gone to mainstream local offerings, and together we can dissect what we have learned and re-apply it to our inner city setting. If we can make it work, we'll get a group together to travel to catch an urban ministry conference. These tend to have long-term results as learning together, setting direction together, and the "doing life" that happens around the conferences really are life-changing.
5. Small groups/Bible studies
Many of those in our community attend churches outside the inner city and are involved in their own Bible studies. We made an offering for those that didn't have that option, and found a good number of local ministers who needed this kind of connection and it wasn't available or relevant from the churches they were involved with. We made some really strong connections with people who we otherwise would never have known.
Whatever you do, we need to be in community. These community builders have worked for us, but you may have something different. If you feel totally alone in your community, there's a few ways to reach out.
1. If you know of ONE believer, ask them to invite one other believer to an event, and pass on those instructions. That's how our 50-person feast grew from 5 people to over 50. Nobody knew everybody there (although we all lived only a few blocks from each other) but everybody knew somebody.
2. Call local churches/missions and ask if they know of anybody living and serving in the community.
3. If there is seriously NO ONE, find a church or small group outside the community to help be your temporary community while you petition God to provide a local community for you.
