Made For Community

Bottomline: You have a longing for belonging because you were made to be in relationship with others.

Talk about my friend chris

Intro- In 2016 and 2017, sociologists started noticing Americans were dying younger and had been for a year or two.

Researchers found that the life expectancy was falling not because of a pandemic or cancer or anything else you might expect. The real reasons were grim and much more preventable stuff: young suicides, drug overdoses, alcoholism, and other preventable diseases of self-inflicted unhealth. In other words, “deaths of despair,” a phrase that has now entered the American vocabulary.

Around that time, studies showing that chronic loneliness is more dangerous to your health than smoking fifteen cigarettes a day began to get significant attention.8 Experts called it an epidemic of loneliness,

Research is pointing to the idea that loneliness is not just bad for your mental health but also your physical heal.

some surveys reveal that around 60 percent of people in the U.S. right now report feeling lonely on a pretty regular basis

Physical consequences of poor connection can be devastating, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease; a 32% increased risk of stroke; and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia for older adults.

Across age groups, people are spending less time with each other in person than two decades ago. The advisory reported that this was most pronounced in young people aged 15-24 who had 70% less social interaction with their friends.

In 2018, nearly fifty thousand Americans ended their own lives. Suicide was, and continues to be, the leading cause of non-accidental death among those thirty-four years old and younger. For every person killed by another, there are more than two and a half people killed by themselves.6 The problem has gotten far worse, not better, since the rise of social media, especially among emerging generations—the demographic most likely to spend significant time on their smartphones. Between 2006 and 2016, the suicide rate for those between ages ten and seventeen rose by 70 percent. In that same time, the number of high school students who admitted having suicidal thoughts rose by 25 percent and the number of teens diagnosed with clinical depression rose by nearly 40 percent.

Kim, Jay Y.. Analog Christian (p. 18). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

Our lack of connection is killing us.

Loneliness kills us body and soul. Because it’s the opposite of what we were made for.

-Justin Whitmel Earley

Creation narrative.... a turn from it being all good

The New International Version (Chapter 2)

18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib x he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

God made us to need others not just Him.

We are hardwired with a longing for belonging.

It reflects our creator who works in community Himself....

“He created us out of relationship for relationship.” -Jennie Allen

The answer to loneliness is community and authentic friendship.

Basically, we can handle a network of only about 150 people.

Inside that Is are layers of friendship that deepen with how much time you spend with a person and the degree of your relationship with them. Research suggests that we can handle only fifty people in what we will call our acquaintances.

Within those fifty people, there are fifteen people in our village. And within our village, we have a capacity to make five of them our BFFs. You read that right. Only five!

“A friend is someone who knows you fully and loves you anyway.”

-Justin Earley

John

The New International Version (Chapter 13)

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Jesus changed the world through relationships, we can too.

Showing up regularly in someones life is one of the most powerful acts of love.

The Church has an opportunity to meet a need that the world desperately needs and cannot deny. ‌

John

The New International Version (Chapter 15)

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Jesus knows you fully and loves you anyway.

-Justin Earley