Built-In Community, No Assembly Required

  Enter your new city apartment for the month—your unit is fully decorated and furnished, with a pre-paid cable and entertainment bundle, free yoga studio and espresso bar, and built in community. Wait…what was that? A host of neighborly soon-to-be-friends are waiting to make your acquaintance—they are enthusiastic about creating meaningful relationships with you. That is, until you check out on the 31^st.To be fair, this is not your usual collegiate shared housing—not dorms, not a frat or sorority house, not a seedy rental sublet to students who split the bill nine different ways. This is instead “co-living,” or, as defined by the trend, a voluntary residence of young professionals with other like-minded people in a city apartment, through a housing project that markets fully-furnished conveniences-included units bundled and the promise of ease in making fast, meaningful friends.Cornering the Market on Digital-Age Loneliness WeLive is a housing project invented by entrepreneurs to help foster the “In Real Life” community aspect of apartment living that so many young working professionals in big cities crave. In an article for GQ,  Benjy Hansen-Bundy calls WeLive “one part social experiment, one part endless summer,” drawing similarities between the commune-like structure and a college dorm. The impetus? Bundy says it is “a market-savvy effort to solve the digital-age loneliness that registers as a low-level yet omnipresent white noise in the lives of young urbanites.”This trend is driven by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists trying to solve the communal needs of young adults in big cities. An article for the Wall Street Journal cites Cole Kennedy, a “24-year-old copywriter who pays $1,550 a month for a room in a 19-bedroom building in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood run by housing start-up Common. The space has weekly potluck dinners, furnished bedrooms, and cleaning services.” Common is a popular competitor of WeLive with a similar concept of a conveniently furnished “apartment + friends” model (but with even more shared amenities and less privacy). Skim through their website for longer than a few minutes and a friendly chat window will pop up, with a (supposedly) real person asking where you're interested in living. Smooth. Common joins the litany of companies highlighting a perceived need: a well-broken in community to step into, with none of the effort, tedium, or awkwardness generally associated with moving in to a new residence in the city and attempting to make friends.In order to understand this trend, it is helpful to consider what Tony Weggemans observes in the Netherlands Journal of Housing and Research. Weggemans, inspired by the Israeli Kibbutz concept to explore examples of innovating housing in his own country postulates that “The last decades have shown a rise of new living forms in the industrialized countries. One of them, the modern commune, seems to represent a search for new bonds between people.” What he observed in his own societal environment still maintains relevancy today, instigated by today’s generational itch for authenticity and humanity within what it means to have community amidst a sea of screens.WeLive reflects a larger movement among the young generation to imitate organic community in urban society through technique in the form of co-living. The current novelty around such attempts at relational living reveals how companies are capitalizing on the intrinsic human need for community, separating it from its historically religious context.While WeLive’s target demographic (young, well-paid entrepreneurs looking for a place to foster friends and community in the city and increase their quality of life) is optimistic of the project’s longevity, others, like Ellen Huet of Bloomberg Technology, are analyzing the statistics and wondering why the business is stalling. Huet experienced WeLive for herself, ultimately concluding that while the living experiment was enjoyable, it is not structured to support longevity; “It was a place to exist for a while,” a former resident notes. But no amount of aesthetic and intentional run-ins with neighbors could make WeLive feel like home.Filling the Community Void        The medium at play here should not be unexpected: housing development, as harnessed by entrepreneurial minds, is being utilized as a means to fill the void of meaningful relationships and community as caused by daily technology. The generation of young professionals is comprised of young adults who feel as if everyone is a click away, yet still yearn for interaction which will make them feel loved, feel valued, feel human. Their very carefully curated social detachedness becomes their biggest vulnerability--wrapped in a fear that what they project online cannot be matched In Real (and far less controllable) Life.The implication of WeLive to the local church is huge: WeLive is seeking to fill a void they claim was left by the vestiges of religion in decades past. What does this say about how effective Christians’ attempts at ‘life-on-life’ community truly are? What should be the Christian response to the current trend toward commercialized co-living? We must know on some subconscious level that attempts to create the perfect living community will eventually result in stilted mimicry that offers neither lasting fulfillment nor satiates the human desire to be loved. Shouldn’t the Church be faithfully modeling what healthy community can look like within the body of Christ? There must then exist ways in which the local body might pursue a more a thoughtful engagement with their young, urban, community-craving congregants.Instant Community through Technique?At this point, it should be clear that the draw of co-living reveals how the human need for community is obstructed by obsession with technique. The co-living trend within the current urban housing market represents a technique-driven attempt to fill the void of strong community in secular society. Where WeLive will fail (and is failing, according to Bloomberg Business) is in its long-term delivery of the sort of community we intrinsically crave—one built from trust, shared experiences in joy and pain, and unconditional love. We can easily assume these ideals will be packaged and ready to live into once we reach adulthood—acquiring a tightly-knit and decidedly grown-up friend-group is a realistic expectation that comes with all the other unspoken milestones of signing the lease on our first apartment, entering into our first serious relationship, experiencing and graduating college, and buying our first car…right?Perhaps not; precisely because, although relationships, like purchasable items, can represent a certain amount of status, they are not so predictably controlled. On a fundamental level, we can easily agree with Arthur Gish, author of Living in Christian Community, that a healthy and vibrant community takes a good deal of trust and commonality to foster.  In the vernacular of the young generation, gaining a ‘support system’ is not analogous to a packaged commodity; and if we think about community carefully, we should not want it to be.Christian Community: A Crash CourseIn order to properly frame this conversation on community done well, we must acknowledge the rich empirical sources of community, a distinguishing marker in the tradition of the Christian faith. For centuries, Christians have fostered their own living communities as a way to faithfully follow the mandate from the Book of Acts (Acts 2 & 4). Acts 2:42-47 describes the early church:

⁴² They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. ⁴³ Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ⁴⁴ All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵ They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. ⁴⁶ Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Thus begins an account of the inception of Christian community in the first century. Acts 4 further elucidates what this communal effort looked like; believers were “of one heart and mind” (4:32) sharing belongings with one another, caring for each other, and generally living in a Christ-emulating manner—that is to say, in the mode of servants to each other (Romans 12:10, Galatians 5:13).As the intent of Christian communal living is inherently different than secular living in that it ought to be more “others-oriented” as opposed to “self-oriented,” so also the defining characteristics of Christian communal living will look markedly distinct as well.Firstly, though the values of Commitment and Discipline are not necessarily religious in nature, the ability for “ordinary people to live well in community is a victory of God’s doing” and an unsustainable feat for the average fickle and flawed housemate (this, according to Thomas Merton, in his book Why we Live in Community). Commitment and Discipline both encapsulate a great deal of sacrifice. Together, coupled with the humility that comes in the realization that the Christian life is not the believer's own (and neither is any other thing he may possess), this creates a foundation for harmonious community.Commitment, manifested as protection, service to the other, and sacrifice to keep the other safe and love them well, reflects the servanthood of Christ (Mark 10:45). Discipline, manifested by undivided devotion to Christ through the stringent practices and at times self-denial, has its precedent in the many monastic movements scattered throughout the history of Christianity. Discipline is also a standard which draws community together; it has often been a measure of unity which has unified diverse bodies of believers.Secondly, Worship (generally in communal form) has shown itself to be a foundational factor of Christian communities—both as a literal model of what response the body of Christ ought to be participating in toward their Savior, but also as a means to mark the passing of life (Dietrich Bonhoeffer explores worship as a unifying trait in Christian community in his poignant book, Life Together, which draws from his own experiences living in a far less ideal community of Jews condemned to execution in the months before the end of WWII). Historically, worship in Christian communities has often taken the form of prayer and song, often around mealtime or at specific times during the day (common among monastic living, and exemplified in Life Together).Another less frequently articulated virtue that derives from worship is Augustine’s caritas (the Latin word for charity; caritas has its origin in liturgical hymn and ritual throughout the early church). Caritas—a “self-denying, neighbor-preferring friendship”, or the graciousness we extend toward others in presuppositional thought, attitude, and action, is fostered through a community that worships God together. More on this idea later, as Alan Jacobs builds on this Augustinian idea in his book, A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (Spoiler alert: while hermeneutics is generally thought of in regards to treatment of a given text, hermeneutical principles can and should be applied to the present conversation on what Christian community ought to look like).Thirdly, Discernment has been a major mark of Christian community, both in communal living and in the life of the church body. In communal living, there has often been “an avenue to seek God’s will corporately, share the wisdom and burden of decision-making, and divide the responsibility of leadership” (Gish). It has been a common trend among the Bruderhof communities, Christian communes around the world which have existed even in a quickly changing technological landscape, thanks in part to the careful planning of their leaders.It is no surprise that, while many Christians are knowledgeable to some degree about their faith’s tradition of what is now termed “religious life” (live dedicated to living and serving in a commune-style living arrangement in the name of Christ) many are not particularly attracted to the idea of pursuing such a drastic lifestyle themselves—here, the prospect of better community is often not a persuasive aspect. A sacrificial, dependent, Christ-centered community is not attractive to many modern Christians, especially those to whom personal autonomy is simply too valuable to give up.Modern Case Studies: Bruderhof Communities, modern communes scattered around the world // Modern Norbertines, a chapter of brothers dedicated to pursuing religious monastic life in California // The Beguines, a collective of lay-women who devoted themselves to Christian community in Medieval Paris.An Unsustainable Community When comparing the foundational values of Christian community with the (often tacitly implied) values of modern-day secular living communities, it becomes clear why secular entrepreneurial attempts at co-living are falling short of sustaining holistic, successful long-term communities. Before going further, however, Christians should take note of the effort of these companies in acknowledging and filling the void of community in current city housing arrangements. As Christians, we may differ in our approach to a solution, but we actually have a lot in common with the secular attempt to create good community living. As relational beings made for one another to reflect our need for our Creator, a certain pleasure and peace comes from being part of a collective whole.(Here, consider Genesis 2:18 apart from its ubiquitously proof-texted application to men who badly need them a wife.) Yet it is also important to weigh two key differences between the mindset of the secularized co-living model verses the communal Christian one.Let us consider the value of Identity: a community like WeLive provides a sense of stable personal identity in relation to the communal structure, fostering a mutually-beneficial bond of voluntary dependency. At the end of the month, a resident has the chance to move out and leave the community, thus exercising the autonomy they never truly compromised. If they chose to stay, they do so for personal benefit. Identity as tied with your community is thus malleable in every sense, and so simultaneously both precious and easily deconstructed. Make a posse with your neighbors, and post a few 'usies' on facebook—but if you don't end up clicking past happy hour, no worries; at the end of the day (or the month, come rent) you are not beholden to them, nor are they to you.Additionally, the value of Comfort places the focus on the individual’s needs and desires, and how the community can serve and please them; here, comfort and its close cousin hedonism, pursuit of pleasure, should mark a distinct difference between the mindset of a Christian community and a secular one. When the community ceases to provide comfort—be it through contention, inconvenience, or the everyday idiosyncrasies of people in their living environments—there no longer exists a reason to stay. This perpetuates a culture of temporal usage and disposal; how relationally dangerous this posture can be, when applied to community. (It is also important here to note that the distinction of “Christian” versus “secular” is not a value judgement on the degree of holiness or sacredness attributed to the former; rather, the former ought to approach community in a noticeably Christ-like manner, whereas the secular community has no such standard to uphold).If secular co-living, for the most part, maintains the same qualities of past Christian communities without the inconveniences of sacrificial love, religious aspect (worship), and long-term commitment, then why will they eventually fail? Perhaps the answer lies within the framing of this question, for with the subtraction of these things the bond between individuals becomes purely self-serving, or at best mutually-beneficial.Let's say your neighbor gets depressed. Not I-just-broke-up-and-need-to-mourn depressed, more like can't-get-out-of-bed depressed. In a WeLive context, if a member were to experience a particularly difficult bout of depression and be unable to care for themselves, or even if a member were to create conflict with others, the response would be to avoid or exclude that member from the community on the grounds that such relationships are toxic to be close to (perhaps this would not happen immediately, if we are to be charitable in this hypothetical; however, exclusion would probably eventually happen.) In the historical precedent of how Christian community has functioned, the response is much different; the sick and suffering are cared for, the contentious one dealt with and disciplined lovingly. Such disruptions within the community are met with greater inclusion, rather than exclusionary response; secular community members have no such loyalty to their tribe once it becomes uncomfortable or convenient to remain a member, if convenience and benefit to self and comfort are the main reasons for their stay.Furthermore, the technique of curating community as a commodity is inherently artificial and will never replace the effectiveness of bonds formed from genuine relationship and love. Without the distinctly sacrificial aspects of Christian community, secular community ultimately fails as people inevitably put their own needs before their neighbor’s. After all, their neighbor exists for them, to enhance their own quality of life; if a neighbor fails to meet this requirement, their usefulness and worth as a commodity also wanes.Modern Case Studies: The Israeli Kibbutz, One of the co-living models which inspired WeLive, traditionally built within an agricultural model. The Middle Ground between Commune and Commercialization In this conversation about community, the connection between theology and right living must be considered. How does the local church enter into this conversation? Most churches have neither the means nor the motive to fully embrace communal Christian living. Christian communes have historically offered a great deal of mission and purpose, but the level of commitment to structure and technique and often isolation from society which they move toward are not essential components to Christianly—Paul, Timothy, Barnabas, Peter, and the other leaders of the early church learned to flourish in their faith within their local secular contexts; isolation was never a part of their missional narrative. Perhaps the middle ground between pursuing commune life and ignoring communal needs lies in something more simple. The church must first reckon with its relationship to technique before they can pursue a healthy, holistic community. Instead of chasing after technique as a means to draw others into community (better social media campaigns, smarter church architecture, more satellite sermon access), an ecumenical shift toward greater hospitality is in order. With this in mind, how do we share well what has been given to us?In regards to thinking more hospitably about housing, the church hasn’t been silent in addressing co-living and the communal needs in its congregants; in her book, Making Housing Happen,  Jill Suzanne Shook writes a blueprint for faith-based affordable housing models. Though the demographic she seeks to serve ranges from low-income families to indigenous peoples, her goal is applicable to this conversation: through “co-housing…[speaks] to the core of so much of the loneliness, isolation, individualism and materialism that is destroying our society.”On a local level, members of the Legacy house church movement, spread across the various neighborhoods of Chicago, often implement this mindset of practical community living. It is not uncommon for members, especially newlyweds and young families, to live together in order to streamline living costs and more fully represent what it is to encourage one another, and bear each other’s daily burdens throughout the week—not just on Sunday.Cohabitation is a literal manifestation of hospitality, but our application need not always go quite so far. Frequently, single members will live with families, who adopt them into their habits and lifestyles. Here, the motivation for communal living is different than that of one attracted to a WeLive model; members share housing as a way to more fully fulfill what they see to be a ‘life-on-life’ exemplification of emotional, spiritual, and needs-based dependency within the Church body; this commitment to “do life together” does not begin and end within a 90 minute Sunday service, but instead extends into the mundane tasks of babysitting, schoolwork, grocery runs, meal preparation, and all that lies within the routine of daily life. Rosaria Butterfield talks about this in her latest book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key. Butterfield remarks that she learned true hospitality in the homes of those in the gay community; she, herself once a self-proclaimed a lesbian feminist, became an unlikely convert at a time when the AIDS epidemic was decimating the gay community. Butterfield argues that hospitality within the church need not resemble the sweet-as-pie flavor of southern hospitality; no, if hospitality is rooted in the gospel it will inherently be more missional in its purpose and manifestation.What is at play here is Christian love, and the caritas that allows us to extend hospitality in graciousness toward one another. The communities we already live in thus become community-integrated housing through the giving of our precious “alone time,” our privacy, our sense of ownership of home spaces. In this way, even if the co-living aspect is not necessarily performed in the literal sense, but the mentality of living alongside brothers and sisters in Christ is exemplified (perhaps this is an expression of the Psalmist’s prayer in Psalm 133:1).In observing the trends and experiments of such companies like WeLive and Common, Christians can be spurred to better manifest the communal nature of their faith to each other as well as with those outside the church. Christian community, done well and faithfully, will look distinctly different from any “built-in” ideal. In Why We Live in Community, Basil Pennington argues that “the fullness of life is found only in community, [which] comes at the cost of complete self-sacrifice.”  Pursuit of inviting others into our mess, into our tight spaces, into the drama and sin struggles of our personal lives goes against everything a curated and professional culture would encourage.On community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers this comfort:

It is true, of course, that which is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God.

Let it be so with us as well, let us not then withhold from ourselves the gift of one another.***The creative exemplification to this piece is a practical talk on community which I hope to give at the RA & Student Leaders retreat at Beechpoint this August. To read the manuscript-in-progress, click here.