Find Your People
Before this study was a study, it was the number-one question Jennie Allen got from women: "How do I make friends as an adult?" We'll look back at the community almost every generation has had until us—and how we are living differently. We'll look at what God meant relationships to be and how we have hijacked that. Learn how to live life less alone and more in community—perhaps in ways you have never thought of before.
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S1: Introduction (Find Your People)
Nowadays, we see community as an accessory, not the essential fabric of life as our ancestors did by default. As a result, we are lonely; we are looking to plug a gaping hole. The hole is bigger than a couple people could ever fill, and so we live constantly disappointed, and we further isolate o...
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S2: The Disruption of Community (Find Your People)
We’ve replaced intrusive, real conversations with small talk and soul-bearing, connected living with book clubs—because the superficial stuff is less messy. Fig leaves are still our go-to today, covering our mess with a “doing fine here!” Our attempts to cover shame will never be sufficient—we’ll...
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S3: Proximity (Find Your People)
Community starts with bringing people into our right-now lives. Opening up to those we’re in proximity to. But a lot of us are strangers with the people we bump into day to day. We go through life barely noticing the people God has put right in our path, insisting that we’re all alone in the worl...
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S4: Transparency (Find Your People)
Transparency is the idea of living without walls. Where we can see what’s really going on with each other and admit we need people. Let's reclaim that ability in our walled-off, locked-up world, where needing others is sometimes seen as weakness. Knowing and being known, needing and being needed....
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S5: Accountability (Find Your People)
We are craving accountability. Accountability is one of those lost tastes of heaven that made God’s plan for community work for the people in it. And this is not just listening to criticism from anyone and everyone or taking all unfounded theories to heart. It is building relationships and taking...
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S6: Shared Mission (Find Your People)
There’s a God-built longing inside each of us: to be about something other than our own individual success. If you want good friends, then run a race together, build a house together, cook a meal together, or live for the greatest mission together a human can have: giving God away together. Be on...
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S7: Consistency (Find Your People)
The hardest part of community is when we hurt someone or they hurt us. We need to resist the urge to distance ourselves when hurt happens. What we need to do is to stay. When we stay, we grow. God made consistency a part of His model for community, because we can’t grow something good if we keep ...
