What Is Community Anyway?

I've been really fortunate to see a lot of different versions of "community" in my life. I grew up in a family that was always endeavoring to bring people together. Whether it was youth sports, Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, or just being the house that everyone came over to after an event or for sleepovers on Friday night, my family was in the mix.

During my most formative years, my parents led a "Mini-Church" group at our church. In hindsight, there was nothing mini about it. At one point the Ellwood Mini-Church had 40+ families involved.  For the bi-monthly dinner and bible study, there were only a few people who could host - they were essentially signing up for having 70+ people show up at their homes. There are countless ACTUAL churches that would love to have that kind of following.

I remember my parents telling me that they felt closer with these friends than they did with their actual families, that the connection with our church friends was more real than the connection they had with their brothers and sisters and parents at that point in their lives. It took me a while, but I eventually understood and have felt the same way at times.

More recently, especially in the start-up world, "Community" has been rebranded as a must-have for a successful young company to succeed.  It has become something that can be hacked and there are countless job opportunities now for "Community Managers."  

This is a different kind of community, but one that I got to see up close and personal while at Waze. We had over 800,000 "community map editors" that contributed to the Waze map of the 60mm people that used the map. There were 80,000+ that went through the trouble of leveling up past community map editor to actually take on a region or a specific part of the map as a manager. A lot of those "community members" were surprised that they received $0 when Waze was sold to Google for $1.3B.

I've been thinking about communities for a long time. Heck, I even wrote about them in Forbes in 2013. But one of the best things that I've come across that I think really lays the groundwork for a conversation about community is called the Four Stages of Community by psychologist Scott Peck.

1. Pseudocommunity: We are all associated with something, like a family, office, school, or club. Everyone we meet there we assume shares a lot of our similar beliefs because they share the same organizing belief that brought us all together. If we don't dig too deep, we can keep it surface level and all enjoy being together.
2. Chaos: We start to get to know each other beyond the class or organization or structure that originally brought us into each other's lives. We realize we couldn't be further from simpatico and we actually disagree about some pretty big things. We are not at all what we thought we were. We are not very happy about this revelation.
3. Emptiness: We question whether it is worth even showing up for this group anymore. They're not at all what we thought they were. We wish we could have just stayed shallow and not discovered what was waiting for us in the depths. It would have been better to just keep the good times rolling.
4. True Community: Very rarely does this actually happen. This is the result that happens when a group survives that chaos of disillusionment and the despair of the emptiness that comes from the truth about our differences, we decide that the group or organization or the person is worth working through or looking past our differences to stay a part of each other's lives.

He had a lot to say on the matter, but I think this quote sums it up nicely.

There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community. - M. Scott Peck

So as we dive in this month on community, I want to say thank you for being a part of this growing community. It is early days, but I think that there can be a True Community built around learning and exploration. I am grateful to all of you for your feedback and insights so far.

Very excited about tonight's Meet-Up! Hope you can join us at 9 pm EST.

Here is the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82753836316?pwd=Zm5rc2lSNm1zNndOc3M4Q3lmK0pkZz09

And for those of you that RSVP'd that you are going to miss tonight, we'll send out a recap and hope to hear your thoughts in the comments in the week ahead.