Understanding Community: My Ongoing Journey

I’ve been writing on and off for a while now about what I think community means. All because of my journey with fellow stay-at-home dads these past few years. Yet I never believed for even a second I was close to understanding it.

So when an opportunity appeared last evening for me to attend a workshop on building community, I was intrigued and signed up to find out more.

As it turned out, I did gain some insights from the session. But not in the way I initially expected.

I Thought I Was Here To Hear & Learn From Others

The workshop took place yesterday, which was a Friday evening. And for many of the 30-odd participants who came, it was probably at the end of a very long and exhausting work week.

I was no different. Having taken on 24 hours of weekly part-time teaching duties since mid-April (compared to my usual 12 to 15 hours), the last thing I ought to be doing is stay out late after a hard week’s work, right?!

Still, I went because I thought this was going to be easy. Instead of me talking and students listening (I like to think that at least a few in each of my classes listen!), I’m just going to sit back and relax through the whole workshop. I will simply hear others talk about the communities they forged, moulded, and kept going. How they achieve these milestones in community building. Then I can bring these learnings back to my community of dads.

But as things turned out, most attendees yesterday were also unsure how to form and sustain communities. Like me, they had come in order to learn from others who knew.

Since the workshop was run along the lines of an unconference, where meeting agendas were driven by participants rather than organizers, this gathering of more seekers than experts naturally ended with more questions than answers!

Not exactly what I had expected.

Questions About Community

Upon realising this after the first hour of self-introductions around the meeting hall, I decided right away what I would do.

Since I couldn’t hear and learn from experienced community builders, cos there were hardly any, I’ll use the time I was there to process my own community experience instead.

So when the time came for participants to brainstorm and offer up questions or topics about community that we had in mind, I wrote down five of mine (see image above).

In doing so, I realised what I came for last evening was essentially this: to find out the “seasons” or phases of a community. Or more correctly, how to detect the onset of a new or different phase in a community’s evolution.

This, to me, was critical for my community of dads at this juncture of our existence.

We’ve been together now — as a ragtag bunch of fathers figuring out our parenting journey — for about two years. Given the fact that we continue to see new members joining us, the organic growth (though welcomed with much delight and gratitude) meant there was increasingly an urgent need to revisit who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re meant to go next.

While growth was never our goal, we acknowledge it as an affirmation that we had a purpose that resonated with others. That purpose? To find fellow sojourners on what is often a very lonely journey for many a stay-at-home parent, but more so for dads.

And we want to honour that purpose and provide a haven for our dads to connect and build relationships.

Yet I was aware that our continued growth meant there was a need to put in place some kind of structure or “succession/evolution” plan.

A Community Is Inherently Messy, So Why Plan?

Granted that communities made of people from different walks of life are inherently messy (which in itself makes communities so fascinating), it’s important to explore how we can optimise the connections among members to meet their needs and build up one another.

Especially when, after just two years, there are now more than 100 members in our fold, thanks to mostly word-of-mouth publicity and the media interest surrounding the annual Father’s Day!

Of course, we’re not without structure as our community currently stands.

Since our inception in March 2023, we’ve put in place the following “tentpoles”:

1. One in-person meeting — to chat and connect — every month
2. A website and social media account that allow people to find us, learn about us, and sign up if they wish to join
3. One WhatsApp community chat that includes breakout groups categorised by interests and hobbies (eg, books, fitness, games, food, etc), geographical locations (eg, fathers who live in the north, west, etc), and needs (fathers with children under two, info on good deals/events/gigs)
4. A small group of administrators (we generally sidestep the inherently problematic power term ‘leaders’) who converse regularly and tag-team one another to oversee the community’s ins and outs. Some of our roles include meeting, screening, and welcoming new members. Moderating any chats or discussions that might destabilise our WhatsApp community or lead to unpleasant exchanges (thankfully, these have been few and far between for now). And of course, we organise and run the monthly meets.

At this moment, the community is still humming along nicely. But that shouldn’t mean that we just continue to coast along with nary a thought as to how to keep the community thriving.

When Will We Know To Say Goodbye?

Having said that, I do believe strongly that there are seasons (from spring to winter) or phases in a community’s life.

Put another way, communities also go through cycles that mirror the human journey — birth, life, sickness, and, yes, even death. [I’m still figuring this out and will say more about this when I’m ready]

I also believe its direction, evolution, success, or otherwise, mustn’t rest on the shoulders of just one or two people at its helm. The community should be a shared asset and not “owned” by a handful of guys, even if there’s still a need for one or a few to front certain initiatives and undertakings when called upon.

Which is why one of my takeaways is that we should not hold on too tightly to the community and try to make it work. The minute we try, we will end up servicing the idea of it rather than the members themselves.

That last thought was likely what prompted me to pen one of the five questions I had on the pink slip: When will I know it’s time to say goodbye to the community?

In reflecting further on this since last evening, I suspect we’ll know the time for goodbyes has come when the community’s:
– outran or forgotten its purpose
– turned into a shell or an institution that serves its ideals but not its people
– busy meeting the expectations of external agents or bad actors out to change or corrupt its raison d’être
– members no longer trust or believe in the community’s ability to meet their needs safely, or afford them a place to contribute their gifts and resources to help the community

Community Is About Connections

One thing has stuck with me these past two years as I explore community work.

It’s ultimately about the connections its constituents have with one another. True, abiding, and deep connections are typically present when there are a handful of its members closely connecting regularly. More so than with the larger community.

So in my community, we’re always looking at how to encourage and enable fathers to make their own connections above and beyond the monthly in-person meets. Or the sometimes endless texts we exchange digitally every day!

When looked at this way, the setup is one of multiple small but vibrant communities rather than one large entity. Like a big garden that has a good mix of different plants and flowers that gives the garden its identity and variety, yet also seen in their distinct clusters separate from one another.

Each of these small groups or clusters should then have its own community enabler or champion who can rally its members to stay connected. And if these clusters reach a level of stability and maturity, we should allow them to decide if they wish to remain as part of the larger community or break away to be on their own.

It’s that freedom, I believe, that gives community its authentic meaning. And ultimate longevity.

In short, go small and not big when it comes to building community.

Hmmmm….all the above gleanings from my time last evening at one building community workshop?

Not a bad way to round off a long week, wouldn’t you say?!