My wife and I have gone through a lot of transitions lately. We’ve moved four times in the last 18 months.

In that same time period, I’ve changed jobs twice, Christa has changed jobs three times and is now a full-time student again, and we have been regular attenders of three churches (and frequent visitors of several others).

I’ll be happy if we can stay in the same place for at least a year! But all this change has left us with a huge lack in our lives.

We’re finally starting to slow down a bit, but we haven’t been able to grow our roots anywhere. Now we’re both so hungry for community.

We have friends, but we tend to see them sporadically. We go to church every Sunday, but we haven’t had the time to get involved. Christa and I talk a lot and we have a great marriage, but we miss that breath of fresh air when others speak into our relationship.

I think we miss community the most because we first met when we were both actively involved in a very strong Christian community. We had friends that we spent time with frequently who challenged our relationship with God to grow and with whom we shared life.

This type of healthy community has made such a difference for my walk with God and my ability to lead and minister to others. My heart is so burdened for the youth pastors that don’t have that type of community in their lives. It’s so hard to do ministry without it.

Without supportive relationships, it’s easy to get worn out in youth ministry. It can let stress build up in your life, and without accountability, secret sins can creep in and start to steal your attention. Nagging parents and the hassles of youth group quickly add up.

The Lord is our true source of strength, but He also gave us friendships and relationships to encourage and strengthen each other when life gets tough.

So Christa and I are prayerfully looking for a community in this area to really get to know and do life with. We don’t just want new friends, but we’re hoping to go deeper with the friends we already have so that we can share life together, talk about our struggles and spiritual questions, and pray together.

Instead of trying to jump into a small group at church and making all new friends, we’re talking with the friends we do have about starting our own small group to purposefully grow spiritually together, and we’re finding out that we aren’t the only ones that are hungry.

So my question for you today is a personal one: Are you a part of a Christian community that is actively growing together and praying together?

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