Proximity Matters: Living Close. Living in Community.

I used to work 45 min from where I lived.

I was a youth pastor. Working in a church.

I’m never going to do that again.

I was not truly a part of that church the 2 years I was there. And to be honest I probably only stayed there 2 years because of the lack of community. (And fifty other legitimate reasons)

BUT!

This is a huge lesson for me in ministry, and simply in life. Whether or not you’re a pastor, or just a guy who works at Starbucks and attends church. It’s SO SO SO important to find a church that is geographically close to you.

I value community. I value people. I’m a 100% relational guy. 

The dude who wants to get coffee with everyone and hear their life story.

The guy who loves to talk instead of play video games.

The guy who in the middle of pick up basketball games will try to get to know the guy who’s guarding him, by asking him about his life story.

The guy who all his guy friends go to talk to because their other guy friends supposedly don’t know how to get serious for more than 5 minutes. (hey, just sayin’, I know there’s more of me out there)

But living 45 min away from my home church was not working.

I hated it.

Though there are positives, in the sense that I worked at a church of 2,000 people that was located in a very tiny community. So living in the community would have put me on call 100% of the time (which for an overly extroverted guy like me I’m cool with 99.9% of the time). Having a beer in public would not be as easy (which I think is ridiculous, i’ll post on that some other time). But in the end it all would have been so worth it. I’ll sacrafice having a beer in public for gaining tight knit community.

So all in all proximity matters.

Live close.

Embrace community.

How far do you live from your church? Have you experienced the same thing as I did, if you’re one who lives far from your church home?