Points of Connection

"Points of Connection" is a fairly simple concept I've been thinking about and playing with for probably the past several years. It builds off of the seemingly simple concept that, for a group to become a community, people must see and interact with each other with some regularity so as to make social interaction with that group of people a ubiquitous part of their lifestyle. The more complex part of this is "how often is often enough?" and "how would you get people to interact that often?" From the start, the complexity of the problem must be understood as having to do with the fact that community building is art, not engineering. The point is that there are no definitive answers to the questions I just asked but there are, I believe, general guidelines that can be followed that at least allow for community to potentially happen.

So, as the name indicates, Points of Connection (or POCs) is really anytime that I interact with all or a subset of my potential community. This interaction is very broad in what it can entail including, sharing a meal together, having a five minute conversation, sitting at a coffeeshop together, or even watching a movie. Even interaction that many people would deem insignificant can, over time, produce a rapport between people that is the foundation of real friendships and real community.

And so comes the general guideline that I have been testing out over the past several years. In the communities that I am involved with, its been my goal for people to have three or more POCs with each other per week. This may sound more like engineering than art but 3+ POCs is not a hard-and-fast guideline. Getting 2 or 4 POCs does not guarantee you better or worse community and I'm not even specifying, necessarily, what exactly that interaction looks like.

In the community I was a part of at Tech, our normal weekly rhythm included worship on Sunday, a large group (25-35 people) gathering on Thursdays, and smaller (6-10 people) Bible studies some other time during the week. That meant that if members of the community did anything else together (share a meal, hang out on Friday nights, whatever) that they were (not counting IM conversation which allowed for almost daily interaction) having four POCs a week! And the results were incredible. Community members were actually living life together. They felt comfortable around each other. They actually knew how each other were doing. Our gatherings ceased to be meetings because community was a lifestyle. Interacting with the people in this community became the most normal thing in the world for people. It's resemblance to the Kingdom was, in my eyes, profoundly striking.

As a final caveat, before you think I'm painting too rosy of a picture, community is (and was) messy at times. It took a lot of hard work to help it be successful and not everyone wanted to be that involved with the community. But for those that did - we saw lives changed in ways that I will never ever forget. I deeply believe in community and in regular interaction to make those communities possible. I will be actively looking for a rhythm of life at Commonwealth that will foster that kind of community. I would welcome your thoughts and ideas as we explore this together.