How to Build a Tangible Community

Nathan, one of the main characters in Wendell Berry’s novel, Hannah Coulter, has seen war up close and personally. Lucky enough to make it home from World War II, Nathan knows how savage the wide world can be. When he returns from his front-row seat at the Battle of Okinawa, all he wants to do is settle into a quiet life of farming in the community of Port William, Kentucky, where he grew up.

Nathan stays while others follow the draw to the big city and its promises of more opportunity. He stays because he recognizes what others don’t: his hometown is as good as or better than any place. Here, at least, he knows the land and has an idea of the effort it’ll take to make a life. Here, at least, he knows the people and they know him. Nathan wouldn’t use the term, but what he has in Port William is a network. A tangible community.

The residents of Port William need each other, and they know it, so they give and take freely of each other’s labor. The answer to the question, “Will you help?” is always, “Yes.”

“Yes, and I will bring my sons to help, too.”

“Yes, the ladies and I will get dinner going for the whole crew.”

“Yes, I’ll be over in an hour with the horses and wagon.”

This is the type of community we crave, is it not? The ability to make a phone call, send a text, or tap out a DM and be assured that help will come.

This is the type of community many of us don’t have.

Maybe we’re striving for it; we open our own homes, eager to give and receive hospitality, but we find others have closed theirs when we have a need. Maybe we’re new in town and don’t know anyone well enough yet to feel comfortable asking for help. We feel isolated and alone.

Maybe we feel something is amiss. We need others, but we don’t know it. Everyone else seems to have it all together, but we feel ashamed that we’re barely hanging on. There’s a sense of instability—of having to go it alone and not ask for help. Who would we ask, anyway?

There aren’t easy solutions here. The type of community Berry portrays takes generations to unite, and later in the novel, he shows how easy it is to scatter. Our world is different from Port William because so many of us are transient, compared with post-World War II rural America.

But Berry’s point rings true: without community—even a shadow of the interdependency portrayed in Port William—we perish. Sure, we have Amazon and two-day delivery. With a WiFi connection, we can order pretty much any tangible thing we need. The problem is, it’s the intangible things we need just as much, if not more. We must have people in our lives who are willing to give of themselves in order for us to thrive.

We need others to pray for us when we’re going through something tough. We need their council when we’re trying to make a big decision. Proverbs 11:14 tells us, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (ESV).

As I see it, though, it’s really in the combination of tangible and intangible where the magic happens. And all too often, Christians only offer the easy intangibles to our brothers and sisters in Christ. When someone says they’re sick, we say we’ll pray for them. We don’t take the more hands-on route of showing up on their doorstep with soup and cold medicine.

The second chapter in the book of Acts paints a picture of a glorious Christian community: “all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (ESV).

It’s easy to read that and think, “That’s too idyllic. Maybe two thousand, or even a hundred years ago, that could have been the reality. Not today.” After all, how many modern churches still operate this way?

The early church shared not just their belongings, they shared their labor like the farmers of Port William. The community pot contained not just offerings of money, but time and talents as well. They shared their prayers, their work, the Lord’s teachings, and, most important of all, Holy Communion.

Tangible and intangible.

How do we form a tangible community that’s closer to the church in Acts, or even what Berry envisions? We can start by offering to others what we need ourselves.

When we see others’ needs, we can start with changing our automatic answer to “Yes,” but not just the intangible “I’ll pray for you.” Our automatic response would be better if it was a “Yes” on both the tangible and intangible levels:

“Yes. Does your family have any allergies? I’m bringing you dinner and prayers.”

“Yes, come on over to my place. Let’s share a pot of coffee and cry together about what you’re going through.”

“Yes, and I will bring my sons to help, too. I’m also bringing hugs, like it or not.”

“Yes, the ladies and I will get dinner going for the whole crew. I was thinking of you when I read this Scripture today . . . ”

Berry writes:

Most people now are looking for “a better place,” which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned from his time in the army and the war. He saw a lot of places, and he came home. I think he gave up the idea that there is a better place somewhere else. There is no “better place” than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we’ve got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven.

The same goes for the community of souls around us. While we will certainly have to wait until we get to Heaven to fully experience the loving community God has in store for us, we can taste it here by saying “Yes” in all the ways we can. It is by showing love for the people around us, in tangible and intangible ways, that our communities can share in the heavenly body of Christ.

Rhiannon Kutzer is a homeschooling mom of five and proud Navy wife. She works hard to be what Chesterton called a “Jill-of-all-trades,” chronically trying new projects for the sheer joy of exploration. She’s addicted to coffee, enjoys dark beer, and loves to be in the mountains. She writes at HomeschoolFamilyCulture.com, and you can find her on Instagram @rhikutzer.

Photograph © Elaine Casap, used with permission