Jamin Bradley

I grew up in a tiny village called Three Oaks, where I first found my drive for community. Many of my good friends lived within biking range, so it was quite common to meet up. If we weren’t at each other’s houses playing video games or playing outside, we were at the park, getting phosphates at the general store, riding our bikes, or collecting cans from trash cans to get $2.50 to rent a video game from the local laundry mat. Village life, baby.

When I moved to Westland, the culture changed, but my communal life did not. I brought several of my friends home from school with me every day, as did my brother, cramming our tiny house with tons of people. I had to ride my bike farther to get to my friend’s houses, but I still did it. We’d often go to the dollar theater to see whatever was playing. We must have gone to church most days of the week to hang out, record videos, play music, splice cords for the soundboard, or push PowerPoint to its limits.

When we moved to Chelsea, we lived on the outskirts of town, but that didn’t stop us from finding community. We rotated around each other’s houses, having the time of our lives. We wrote music, watched movies, played video games, deep-fried whatever we found in the freezer, and went on adventures together.

The communal life is one that I hope to always live. I was so happy yesterday when a neighbor I hardly knew knocked on my door and asked me to remove a mouse she had caught, which she was terrified of. (I oiled the poor guy off the sticky trap and let him run free behind my garage.) Of all the side ministries I’ve run at church over the last 15 years, the one that has continued to this day is our Thursday night hangouts, which is nothing more than eating dinner together and playing games. I love making avenues for people to just be together.

Community is one of the ways that we image God, because God himself is community: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As a being, God is never alone, for he is always three. One of the hardest moments Jesus faced in his life was while being alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. He came out of that moment looking for his community.

We were made for each other. May we choose love and friendship, and flee from the kind of isolation that drives us from what we need in others.