by Bernie Willock
Jesus continues to call me deeper and deeper into various expressions of “being with” other people. However, my longing for meaningful friendships is often at tension with my cultural predisposition for individual autonomy. The call to community consistently challenges my commitment to master conflict and stay with others, to remain open, vulnerable and accountable to my friends and colleagues even in the midst of difficult circumstances.
My wife Marlene and I have been married for 29 years. In that time we have had two “long-term relationships” with communities of faith. Our first faith community introduced us to Jesus and the call to follow him in vocational service to others. We were shown great patience and loving-kindness as we struggled to find our way in this new life of faith, hope and love. Jesus shaped us through these new friendships as we served the youth of that community, and as the pastoral staff mentored and shaped us for the road ahead.
We moved after a time to be closer to my in-laws, a response to Marlene’s deep desire to connect more significantly with her parents. We started a church plant with close friends in this new town and served there as lay leaders for 16 years. In this community we experienced deep spiritual bonding. We were there to help carry others in times of great distress, and experienced the grace of community when others helped to carry us through the tragic loss of loved ones. Together we witnessed healing as lonely sojourners who had found a community of brothers and sisters to love and be loved by.
These experiences confirmed for us that the cry for community is a call to deep conversion; a commitment to stability and willingness to walk the long journey with others. These others can be our family, faith communities, friends in entrepreneurial enterprises, or global partners in distant lands. In all of our years, we have not found a utopian experience in community.
To the contrary, Marlene and I have found that being in community is something that breaks us: we are deconstructed and reconstructed over and over again. It is during times of challenge and loss that we have found our hearts reshaped for mission. Through community, the Spirit reorients us to the gift of grace and God’s renewing work in our midst.
For the past 13 years we sought to create a business that was a sign and symbol of the Kingdom in our town. That led us into a partnership with another couple that would challenge our economic assumptions and pave the way for an open hearted generosity that we had not anticipated. Like our experience in faith communities, we discovered in partnership the power of a shared vision, the desire in all people to add value to our world, and the transformation that occurs when we remain committed to working through conflict together and openly facing our weaknesses.
Today, Marlene and I are establishing an intentional faith community on 29 acres of farmland from her parents on the west coast of Canada. Concurrently, we responded to an invitation to help establish the WMF Canada community with Andrew, Martha and others. One community is shaping the other as we seek to bear witness to hope at home and through our friendships with WMF communities abroad.
My friendship with Martha and Andrew has the blessing of familiarity and sameness as we experience life in the same west coast Canadian context. I love the stability and continuity that it nurtures. Our friendships with Kolkata and Lima are relationships of difference that bring the blessing of challenge and transformation. I repeatedly see that my deep longing for companionship, service and growth on the journey is met when I respond truly to the call to be with the others in community. The relinquishment of my self-preoccupation is the cost of admission.