Longing For Community

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

One of my favorite stories to tell, when I get invited out to do a storytelling program, is about a gas station in the village of Loyd, just down the road from the farm where I grew up in Richland County, Wisconsin in the 1960s. I describe the setting in some detail, from the pop cooler to the potbellied stove around which you could almost always find several farm neighbors telling stories and laughing as they drank their favorite flavor of Hill Billy Pop, a local brand bottled in Richland Center. Grape was my choice whenever I had a quarter to spare.

They used to say Orrin Fuller, the old proprietor, sold more pop than anybody else in the county, and I guess maybe it was true. It wasn’t until years later when I realized the men didn’t come there for the pop. They could have drunk pop anywhere. They came to Orrin’s because he made them welcome. It was a safe place, an “everybody knows your name” kind of place.

Orrin was a quiet fellow, not outgoing or affable in any remarkable way. I don’t remember him ever telling a funny story or a joke. On occasion he could be a bit of a grouch. But he was, in his own unassuming way, the catalyst for something essential, something life sustaining, even lifesaving. We found something there which all of us yearn for, a community where we fully belonged.

We all long for this: a community where we can say what’s on our minds and laugh together at the wacky vicissitudes of life. We all want to belong. It is one of the basic human needs, something we just have to have.

Some of us are fortunate to find community in our families. You are blessed if you have a large, extended family that loves to get together. My dad had six brothers and one sister. Mom had three brothers and two sisters. That made for ten uncles, nine aunts, and thirty-three first cousins, not to mention a host of great aunts and uncles and second cousins. I took for granted houses and yards full of people at family events. When I married I discovered that Jo came with a multitude of relatives, too. At the first family funeral I attended the church was packed with over a hundred close family members. After forty-nine years, I have just about learned all of their names.

We also find community in the various groups of friends and acquaintances to which we belong. Some people find community in service clubs like Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis, in choirs, card clubs, bands, sewing circles, softball and bowling teams, bars, hunting parties, among golfing buddies and shopping friends. And sometimes people find community in church.

I know that some of you who are reading these words have belonged to a church all of your lives. You have lifelong friends there who you love like brothers and sisters. You belong to them and they belong to you. Others of you, like me, whose job has taken you to many different places over the years, know that it can take a long time to find the right church and to feel at home there. You realize the Spirit has taken you where you need to be when you have that warm feeling of belonging.

We know a church is what it is supposed to be when it satisfies this deep longing we have for community.

I used to tell our new members that they would know they fully belonged to the church when the stories that long-time members told them of days past became their stories. And I warned them that they won’t tell you the really good stuff right away: about all the tragedies and scandals and hardships the congregation has endured, all the embarrassing things they laugh and cry about, until they come to know you. But once that happens, you will carry that adopted identity and tell those stories as your own for the rest of your life, wherever you go.

We also know a church is not what it is supposed to be when it is not able to sustain community with their own members who need it most.

Rachel Held Evans, known for her blunt honesty about her evangelical upbringing, is the New York Times bestselling author of “Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church.” In 2015, four years before her untimely death at the age of 38, she wrote about her dear friend, Andrew, who was rejected by his preacher father and his church when he told them he was gay:

“…after struggling with bouts of depression and despair, Andrew came to terms with his sexuality. He left home to attend college… and found a new church that accepted him as he was…. Andrew formally came out to his family on the Thanksgiving break of his freshman year. It didn’t go well. Now Andrew lives in his dorm room, cut off from his family and working to pay off his education on his own. The last time he spoke with his father, Andrew was told he was going to hell. But Andrew wasn’t alone during that difficult Thanksgiving break. A whole team of people from his new church had committed to pray for him for those four days.”

Rachel tells how Andrew invited her to his baptism at his new church, something he had longed for all of his life, but had been denied by his father because, as Andrew said, “He wanted me to wait until I was good enough, holy enough.”

Rachel wrote, “That’s when I understood why Andrew had invited me to his baptism. I was part of the only family he had. Andrew’s adoption into God’s family had been far more tumultuous and painful than my own, but he wanted me to be a part of it simply because I was among those who would not turn him away, simply because I loved him as he was. Sometimes the church must be a refuge even to its own refugees.”

Rachel once said something that still troubles many in her Evangelical family of origin, ““I thought God wanted to use me to show Gay people how to be straight. Instead, God used Gay people to show me how to be Christian”

The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired clergy member of the Wisconsin Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. He is the author of nine books for CSS Publishing Company including “How to Preach the Miracles.”