"Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World" by Jennie Allen

For years now I've been interested in the concept of deep community: what it is, how to create it, and the stories of people who have found it. That's what led me to Find Your People by Jennie Allen.

Potential Roadblocks

I want to address two potential roadblocks that may come to mind for you, because they did for me before reading this book:

1. Too shallow? I have an immediate skepticism of people (and their books) who are popular in the Christian world. I assume that they are shallow and lack substance. Although Allen would be one of the more popular Christian authors/thinkers out there, the shallow stereotype does not apply to her (as I'll share shortly).

2. Too...female? Allen's target audience would tend to be women, so I wondered how much her book would apply to me as a guy. And to be sure, most of the examples in her book are about females. However, I found that didn't bother me. The substance of what she had to say was good and general enough to apply to me.

The Full Package

To get straight to the point: Find Your People is the full package. It had everything in a book about relationships and community that I would hope for.

• Theological. Allen shares the theological and biblical basis for community in an intellectually sturdy yet accessible way. She shares about how we were made for relationship, our destiny is community, and sin gets in the way.

• Emotional. She names and accurately describes the longing many (if not all) of us will at some point feel for rich community, the pain of loneliness, and the hopes and fears we have as we set out to build community.

• Practical. The book doesn't get lost in theory or idealism but offers practical tips and steps we can take to foster the kind of community she speaks of. The main body of the book consists of five crucial ingredients of community—proximity, transparency, accountability, shared purpose, and consistency—and offers practical advice for each area.

A Warning

The one word of caution I would offer regarding the books is that it is effective: it will make you long for deep community (or long for it more, if you already do). As I was reading the book, I kept thinking to myself that it would be nice to read it with a group of other people. It seemed like it would be easier to experience what Allen describes if there was a group of other people also catching the vision and willing to put in the effort to take coordinated steps in that direction.

But in her defence, Allen tackles that difficulty head-on. In a similar spirit to the saying, "if you want to make a friend you need to be a friend," she tells her readers that it's unlikely that deep community will just fall into your lap—or even that the people around you will be seeking it with the same intentionality you are. To find deep community you will likely have to be the one to help create it, and that will likely have to be done with small, patient, intentional steps done consistently over a period of time.