Community Building - Caleb Scott

I didn’t know what biblical community looked like much less regular community.

Sure I can get along with most anyone for a short time/for a season, but I have never really been the person who intentionally sought out community and tried to get to know everybody. I would have my select few friends and amongst that a very select few really good friends, but was still very much on my own, rarely confiding in anyone. My community was very small and chosen by myself so I was naturally skeptical when I was told that the 13-14 other people that I would be doing the Fellowship with would become my closest and best friends for the rest of my life. Sure I’d probably become good friends with 1 or 2 of them but all of them? Let’s pump the brakes a little bit. How wrong I was.

Fast forward to April and I now have 13 Fellows who I would have very little trouble confiding anything to them (plus Lucas our Fellowship Manager, and Maggie our Fellowship Coordinator). What changed? 9 months of doing projects, working retreats, teaching OE, living together in the same household, and all the other things that only happen in the Fellowship (too many to list, sorry if you haven’t done or seen the Fellowship up close, if you have however, you know what I’m talking about). Doing life together (great book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer by the way), studying/memorizing Scripture together, going through the same struggles together, going on a “Big Trip” together. It all builds a bond of trust with one another. Sure there have been bumps along the way, but that’s to expected when you put a bunch of people with different backgrounds who don’t/hardly know one another in the same program and force them to live together for a whole year. Plus we’re all a bunch of sinners so there’s that.

Biblical community is a command (Hebrews 10:24-25; Ecclesiastes 4:9-12; Proverbs 27:17; and so many more verses I could reference) that I had kind of ignored for most of my life. These 13 Fellows that I get to do life with encourage me, support me, teach me, bear with me in my struggles, but also gently reprimand me. I also get to do that for them too. Had you told me that this is where I would be relationally 10 months ago, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. Now though? I am so grateful that God has placed me here far from everything else I know back in the Midwest with these 13 other Fellows that I get to call my loving Brothers and Sisters in Christ. There are things that I admire and value in each and every one of them. I wouldn’t change a thing.  I’ll close with Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”