[This is part of a series on Thriving in the City.]
One of the defining marks of the modern world, and especially in cities, is that we live increasingly fragmented lives. Whereas most humans in history have lived, worked and worshipped in the same area, we now tend to separate these aspects of our lives out: your home, your workplace and your church may all be in different areas.
This has had a huge impact upon relationships, and upon churches. Historically, churches were always local communities. These days a church may gather from far and wide, and that creates a new set of challenges in building community.
How did this come about? Perhaps the biggest cause we can point to is the invention of affordable transport – cars, buses, and trains. Carl Trueman, a professor of historical theology, describes the invention of cars as “the most important date in church history”. Why?
Without access to transportation we are limited by the distance we can reasonably walk from home to work or church. That is why village life has been the norm for most, and why even big cities were (historically) more like an amalgamation of villages, so that at one point, if you lived in Wimbledon, it was most natural to work and worship there also. Obviously, that way of living makes community and church life much more straightforward.
Technology changes our lives for the better and for the worse. And the irony here is that the very technologies designed to bring us together and make the world smaller become the technologies that keep us apart. Evidently, this is the effect the internet is now having. We have found ways to relate across vast distances online (the internet brings us together) but that also means that we spend more of our lives on screens and less time with others (the internet keeps us apart). And what the internet is doing to impoverish real human connection, affordable transport did before: It allowed large distances to become less of a problem (transport brings us together) but it also means that we live these fragmented lives (transport keeps us apart).
Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves whether the way modern life is structured is really for the best. For example, you can choose to rebel against the decaying effects of the internet on your relationships by disconnecting as much as possible, enjoying face-to-face time with others, and refusing to get drawn into so-called “social media” and the travesty that is “online church”. Taking this logic further, one of the ways we can thoughtfully rebel against modern fragmented living is by choosing to bring the various dimensions of our lives closer together; and especially to live, worship and experience community in the same place, if possible.
Years ago, someone said to me that in order to enjoy city life you need to live within walking distance of people you know. After 20 years in London I can say that this is emphatically true. My wife and I have lived in seven different homes together. We’ve done the commuting thing (out of necessity), at one point living about an hour from the church we were part of. We also made a big effort – partly as a reaction to this experience – to live as close to church as we could from then on.
This may seem impossible if you can’t afford to live any closer to friends and church. So, let me end with a few tips to provoke you a little:
1. You should consider sacrificing space over friendships. It’s true that the further out you live, the more affordable it gets and the more space you enjoy, but you can also find yourself disconnected. It may be right to sacrifice a little space in order to live closer to community, and that is certainly a choice my wife and I have made for our family of six.
2. Look for pockets of community around the city. It’s not all about being closer to the church itself, but closer to the people. I love seeing this intentionality work itself out when friends have gravitated towards one another and have formed community where they are.
3. Aim to live within walking distance of others if you can. There’s just something about using public transport – even when it’s less time than walking! – that creates a psychological distance from others.
4. Make the ask of others. My wife is famous for asking (instructing!) people to move closer to us, and amazingly, people have done just that.
5. Ask God to provide. We have had some amazing experiences of God’s provision in this area. At one stage Sie Yan was a student, and I was on a pretty poor trainee pastor salary, but God made it possible for us to rent a flat way below market value. Something similar happened when we bought our current flat. Our God is a Father, and he loves to provide for his children.