It takes a Village
My mom is Papua New Guinean and we have a village, a tribe that we belong to. My grandparents live in our village and growing up we visited it often. It sits beautifully across the mighty Sepik river in the East Sepik Province. You know the saying, “it takes a village”?
I’ve lived and experienced it and it’s a beautiful thing to have. A village, a tribe, a lineage that you belong to. We would walk from one end of the village to the other and my mom or an aunt would share who lived in the house we passed, how we were related, or tell stories about the family. No matter what, I knew these people had my back and I was a part of something great.
Have you yearned for that proverbial village? A community that surrounds me for all the good and bad moments and everything in between.
We need community
Humans are built to be in relationships and participate in a community. We yearn for connection, to be fully known, loved, and accepted. And to achieve that we have to be willing to be in deep authentic relationships. I’m a person of faith and I believe that God has created us with a void that can only be filled by relating to Him and others. Relating means walking alongside each other, building each other up, taking the time to fully know each other. It’s being in Community.
What are the steps to building a community?
Identify a common struggle, goal, or desire
A common goal, struggle, or desire brings people together. We are built to find connections with each other. When we walk into a room full of strangers we usually scan the room to find someone that looks like us or for some commonality. We build communities based on those commonalities. Sports teams, book clubs, hobby groups, professional networks, are all built on a common goal or desire.
To build a community you have to identify a goal, struggle, or desire that will bring you and others together.
Find your people
Have you watched Grey’s Anatomy? Meredith and her best friend, Christina, called each other “my person” meaning that they were each other’s go-to people for anything that life threw their way. In the same manner, building an authentic community means identifying people who share your common goal and desire. Finding people that you can relate to, people who can stand with you through the good and bad. It can be hard to find those people but it’s worth it.
Make your Intentions known
Building a community is like any new relationship. I love old-time books and movies like Pride and Prejudice where when a man was interested in a woman he had to make his intentions known. William Darcy wrote a letter to Elizabeth Bennet to make his intentions known. He struggled to share his feelings and was a very prideful man. So was she. So to get on the same page he wrote his thoughts down in writing.
People won’t know that you’re trying to create an authentic community if you don’t share that vision with them. As you identify people to be a part of your community, you can start talking to them about your goals for the community you want to build, why you’re building it, and invite them to join you in this vision.
Be Vulnerable
It only takes one to start an authentic community. You.
Building and thriving in an authentic community means giving to that community. Giving to those people and your heart, your struggles, goals, and desires. An authentic community starts with you. If you lead by example others will follow. If you’re open and vulnerable so will others. It’s scary to be the first one to do it. Believe me, that’s been my journey throughout writing my blog and sharing on social media. But I had to start somewhere.
Set Guidelines
Create a common language and desire for your group. If you’re on a soccer team you wear a team jersey and shorts. You wear cleats not sneakers, right? Although the team jersey and shorts match every member and signify a group, you usually wear the type of cleats that you want. One member might have bright neon green cleats while the other goes with a sleek black color.
The jersey and shorts are a common language, in this case, a visual to show unity and one team. But each member has a unique personality that can be showcased through their choice of cleats. The same goes for a community. You are bonded by a common goal, but bring unique perspectives and insights to the group.
Guidelines should help you. They shouldn’t be rules and regulations to follow but instead be used as a framework to keep everyone in the group on the same page and safe. These guidelines should keep your goal and purpose in mind.
Be Generous
In a blog post about building a community, Jeff Goins talks about being generous with your time, resources, and energy. People notice when you make time for them and give unconditionally. People are drawn to givers. So be generous with your community. Give them the time and energy that is deserving of an authentic, mutually beneficial community.
But let me throw in a disclaimer here, being generous doesn’t mean letting people take advantage of you. Give willingly but set boundaries and allow time to pour back into yourself. If you’re running on empty you can’t give. And you and your community will suffer for it.
Bring Value
Bring value to your community and it will thrive. Value your people. Putting value in every member of your community and valuing the goal and purpose that brought you all together will help your community thrive. Building an authentic community is not easy. And authenticity comes at a price. Vulnerability comes at a price.
If you put value into being vulnerable, accepting each other in your community without judgment, condemnation, or uncertainty people will feel fully seen and known. And will want to participate even more.
Follow these steps and you’ll be able to build and keep an authentic community. And we need it, we desperately need it.
Why do we need an authentic community?
2020 was a dividing year. We were divided through a global pandemic that kept us physically separated from each other but we were also divided through our thought process, our ideology, and our politics. We were divided on racial issues and social justice.
And we are all relearning how to be around each other, learning how to talk again to strangers, and how to go about getting together with friends and family that we haven’t seen in a year and a half. We’re probably also learning or in need of learning how to discuss dividing topics with people you don’t agree with, we need to learn how to empathize with those who are in brutal pain and agony over the death of Black women and men in the U.S., of those in pain over the Asian American lives being taken, attacked, ignored, and the police officers who are hurting over their profession rightfully being scrutinized.
We have to learn to lean across the aisle – the political aisle, the race aisle, and any aisle that separates us from being in loving, mutual relationships and creating authentic community. 2020 has divided us and broken parts of our community because we disagree on very important topics.
This past year and a half has left a lot of us lonely, isolated, misunderstood, and divided. Why not rebuild and go into this year with a community that understands, respects, and embraces your different opinions, thoughts, desires, goals, and struggles. Why not build a community that fully sees you and accepts you for all that you are?
An Invitation to my community
I started Wari Tumas in hopes to find a community of like-minded individuals to go on a journey of vulnerability with me. My vision is to Build a generation equipped to mend communal and individual brokenness with authenticity and vulnerability.
My goal is to build a community that can use vulnerability to eradicate silence about topics and truths that are kept hidden and that we’re afraid to discuss, mend brokenness by bringing brokenness to light and redefine authenticity by living it out daily, choosing to fully know and love ourselves so that we can, in turn, love others.
Does this sound like something you’d like to be a part of?
If so please consider joining my email list, and getting to know me more.
