I finished reading The Search to Belong: Rethinking intimacy, community and small groups, by Joseph R. Myers on the plane last week. As a speech communications major and now a pastor I found it to be a very engaging read. Myers is applying Edward T. Hall’s work on proxemics or how people deal with space in relationships. Myers had the serendipitous occasion to apply Hall’s work to the church’s search to help people create meaningful community. For 12 years now I have grudgingly resigned myself to the reality that “everyone is not going to be in one our small groups.” But along the way I too have been asking “Does non-participation in a one of our small groups necessarily mean that a person is NOT advancing in their walk with Jesus Christ?” Myers’ book has been very helpful to me.
Myers asserts that a person in healthy community has a sense of belonging in four spaces: public, social, personal, and intimate. He writes: “A healthy strategy for those working to build community entails allowing people to grow significant relationships in all four spaces–all four. It means permitting people to belong in the space they want or need to belong. Insisting that real, authentic, true community happens only when people get ‘close’ is a synthetic view of reality and may actually be harmful.”
“Community, true community, can and does deliver roots, place, and belonging. But it delivers these relationships in the particular space occupied by the particular person at that particular time. True community is accomplished through significant relationships we embrace in all four spaces. (52)”
I highly recommend this book for small group leaders, pastors, and church-planters–anyone involved in developing the architecture of community. This has added fuel to the obvious observation that “one size does not fit all” and has given me a lens for helping my congregation help people create the healthy community life that they need.
