Jennie Allen: Find Your People
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It's Live in the Bream with host of Fox News at Night, Shannon Bream. All right, this week on Live in the Bream, one of my very favorite people and authors. I love everything that she has written and I bet you do too if you're listening and she's got a brand new book which makes this even more exciting. Jenny Allen is with us. She is the visionary and founder of The Gathering If,

gathering. We can talk about that too. She's the host of her own top rated made for this podcast. She's a New York times bestseller. Get out of your head was one of her fabulous books that I've heard and recommended and just over and over and again. Now she's got a brand new book called find your people building deep community in a lonely world. It is out February 22nd and Jenny, we're so glad to have you. Oh, so good to be here, Shannon. Thank you for having me.

I remember you posting as this book was coming together and you're writing it, you're looking for the title and it just sounded like something really exciting. And now that I've got my hands on it, I think it is going to be such a huge blessing to people about the fact that we are built and designed for community, for close, deep, accountable, real friendships. But a lot of us, especially over the last couple of years, have felt a lot of distance.

So how can we fix that? Well, yes, you're right. I mean, obviously a pandemic just put us all in our corners. We were all alone and isolated on our little islands. And the sad part is prior to the pandemic, three and five people admitted to feeling lonely, which I think is a brave thing to admit to. So I imagine it, you know, I just am thinking this is, this is the other pandemic beside the pandemic is we've got isolation everywhere.

and disconnection everywhere. And so it's hard because we're going to come out of this. And my hope is that we will come out and we will want to rebuild this into our lives. And my hope is we'll build it differently than even we were doing before, because it wasn't working before. We live in the most independent, isolated culture.

We are one of the loneliest generations prior to the pandemic that's ever been. So there's got to be a new way to do it. And I'm really excited that we have a chance coming out of the pandemic to really rethink community and to build it into our lives in a

deeper way. I have underlined and starred so much of your book already, which I always do with your books because there's so much good stuff in there. But I want to read from early on in the book. You say we've replaced intrusive real conversations with small talk and we've substituted soul bearing deep connected living with texts and

And a night out together every once in a while because the superficial stuff seems more manageable and less risky. But you talk about, you know, when you live lonely, yes, life may be less messy and complicated and relationships are those things. But we're really empty in a lot of ways when we don't have those real solid call you up when you're crying. It's not as running down your face kind of friendships.

Yeah. You know, I was afraid of feeling needy and acting needy and being needy. I think that was one of my barriers is I didn't want to risk anything.

coming across as draining to people. And so there was a lot of barriers that I had to overcome to get to a place where I really experienced the kind of relationships I was craving. But all of us were built this way. I mean, our DNA, the way we were built by God was to need people. I mean, he created us. He is a communal God and he created us to live in community. It's not just

you know, what we're supposed to do. It's who we are. Kurt Thompson, who's a wonderful neuro researcher. He says it this way.

He says, we come into the world looking for someone looking for us, that even as an infant, we are born and we're craving someone looking for us. And I think that is so profound and so much the way we all feel right now. Yes, we want to look for someone. That's the unselfish thing to say. But we also want someone that's looking for us. And so that takes some vulnerability. That takes...

risking that we might be rejected, sharing things that might be difficult to share. And so, yeah, it is a harder, messier way to live, but we truly were built by God for it.

You give such a good illustration that really hit home for me talking about going to visit a small town in Italy and walking into the store and sort of, there's like a record scratch. Like, cause somebody, somebody new is there because these people know each other for generations. They're in each other's lives. They stay there and have these long conversations while they're picking out their fresh meats and produce for the day. Um, and how everyone in this little town kind of knew each other. And I think for a lot of us who live in big cities, um, and big

busy lives with kids and careers and everything else. We just keep going. I mean, you just keep doing the next thing. Um, and there was something in you that sort of ached about that. And I feel that too. Um, the little town my husband is from, when we go back there, I think this is so crazy. We kind of can walk everywhere. Everybody knows each other. They know each other's families. And what a beautiful thing to actually have those kinds of deeper connections that we're just flying through life. Many of us without making.

Well, and it's not just your husband's small town. 80% of the world still lives in village type communities. Most of the world throughout history, in fact, almost every generation until the industrial revolution lived in village like communities. They lived in about 100 to 150 villages.

people, groups. And so they did this all their lives. Most people didn't move more than 20 miles in their whole lives. They didn't even travel more than 20 miles. So there was a sense of, we got to work it out together. All of your family members live together. The nuclear family, this is an interesting thing, was actually a concept that came about in the 50s that a marketing guy created. And what I mean by that is two adults and two and a half kids, the definition of family being that small unit.

That happened when they were trying to sell goods into individual households, because prior to that, families lived together, aunties, uncles, people that were bio-related and that weren't. You think about cultures where the abuela is on the street and she's grandmothering all the kids on the street. That was the way people lived, that

that people would call somebody an abuela, a grandmother, that wasn't even their grandmother because people lived in this communal way. And then marketing comes along and says, hey, we want to sell more toasters, basically. And let's basically make a family this smaller unit.

And I think we're all craving to be a part of a bigger family. We're all craving people checking in on us and making sure that we're okay. We're craving people to invest in and mentor. And so for me, this book and this project revealed something deeper than just we want our three to five best friends, which I kind of knew going in. And I knew that was an ache for people.

but we really want more than that. We want a community. We want a village to surround us. And that feels daunting, but the reality is every one of us, even in big cities, we have a lot of people around us. If you just look at the people you work with and the people that maybe you go to church with, or the people that you pick up your Starbucks from, you've got a lot of people. And what if you started treating them like friends instead of strangers? And what if you talk to the parents that you stand next to at the soccer game instead of just scroll your phone and

say, Hey, but not really get to know him. And I think that's where things begin to change is when you notice the people that are already right in front of you and you begin to see them as part of the village that, that you're a part of and begin to treat them that way, even in the big cities. Yeah. You're so right. Cause how many times do we look around a room, whether it's with our family or coworkers or whatever, and every single person's on a different screen. And I mean, do you think that you, you talk about the marketing in the fifties, do you think we've kind of

you know, been sidetracked by this idea that we do need to be ultra independent and that we need to just make decisions for ourselves and that we can zone out and be on social media rather than the stickiness of real relationships, which never run perfectly smooth.

Well, it's so funny. It's not just a barrier. We love it and prize it. It's the thing celebrated in our culture, independence and doing something on your own. That's excellent. That is what we prize. We, we prize the individual. And so we're in a culture that really has it backwards. And it's funny because even now, like my son's from Rwanda. And so we go and visit a lot and we have a lot of friends come here from Rwanda. And so

We love their culture. It is so different than ours. In fact, that was a lot of what I talk about in the book because my pastor there, Pastor Charles, he talks about he's from Uganda, but he moved to Rwanda and is pastoring there.

And he says, you know, Jenny, I come to America and I feel sad for you. I feel sad that you have so much, but you are so lonely and you're so disconnected. And he said, I noticed even in Rwanda, when people get wealth or money, they build a big, strong fence and they don't need anybody. They get a guard, they get a dog. And I'm like, that's really what's happened to us. We have what we need. We can Amazon what we need if we don't have it.

And we don't really meet our neighbors. We really don't borrow from each other. We don't share. We don't think of life as a communal experience. That's the only way they view it there. They're all communal. I take my son over.

And immediately auntie Alice, and they say, hi, I'm auntie Alice. And they introduced themselves as aunts and uncles. And then they start parenting my child, right? Like right in front of me. And if we did that in America, people would be like, that is so offensive. That is just how they live. They co-parent all the children together. And I think we're really are missing something. In fact, that was the premise of the whole book was what are we getting wrong? Because it made me curious when I would travel, not just to poor countries in Italy. I felt it too in Europe. I felt it.

So what about that could we bring into our suburbs? What about that could we bring into our neighborhoods and our busy lives here? And there are things, there are ways to practice living in community the way that people always have that can change everything. Live in the Bream continues in a moment.

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Yeah, we're talking to Jenny Allen. The new book, Find Your People, Building Deep Community in a Lonely World is out February 22nd. And you do get really practical in the book because we need these tools. And especially if we've missed a generation or two of living this way or more, you talk about all kinds of things, how we can work through them, the kinds of friends that we need. You talk about specific goals that we have and the things that stand in their way. The very first one is about proximity and the barrier is busyness and who can't relate to that.

I mean, it is probably, you know, it's interesting. I've loved this project because I've gotten to hear everybody's stories about friendship for them. And it's so different. This was not an easy book to write because everybody's barriers and struggles and feelings about friendship and experience of friendship are all over the place, right? It's not just one problem. We've got so many. And so busyness was probably the most common one, but it was cool. As I did the research, I was able to say quickly, busyness

Busyness is not our enemy, actually, because in the busyness are people. Even if it's by Zoom, even if it's limited to a certain medium, you probably in your busyness are passing people every day. So it actually became...

an asset to think what are, who are the people you're already with? Because proximity was the most helpful thing in villages in Rwanda and villages in past times. If you could just be together in the same environment, in the same place without doors, right? They didn't have a lot of, you go to a village in Rwanda, a lot of them don't have doors. They have fires in the middle of their village where they come and, and,

cook and, and talk to each other. So, so there was definitely some certain things that I thought, Hey, we could take these into our lives. And certainly we probably still need to lock our doors where we live, but even if it's just more access and, and knocking on a friend's door without being invited and, and, and basically acting like we're, um, we're in better proximity than we are. And, and so the busyness doesn't scare me so badly as, um,

as I thought it would in this project, because it scares everybody else. My hope is that people see the people that are in their busyness and notice, hey, this is the makings of a village. I could start to spend time with these people in a deeper way as we're doing life together beside each other anyway. And that could start to change everything. Yeah.

And I think one of the hardest ones too is accountability. And it feeds into that also transparency and vulnerability. And so many of us who are, you know, in a faith-based community, we think of that in terms of having people in our lives who can kind of call us out, keep us on the right track.

Um, and sometimes that's really hard because it, it forces us to admit that the things we're struggling with, the parts we don't put on Instagram, um, you know, the real struggles and vulnerabilities that we have, how do we approach building that into relationships? If we've, you know, got some concerns or some walls up about doing that, how do we find that level of connection with people? Okay. This is very complicated and I'm going to say it really quietly and slowly. Just do it. Okay.

And it is complicated. I mean, it's simple, but it's hard. And I think...

You know, what I've learned is the more I am transparent, the more people are transparent with me. And the more that I share what's difficult for me, the more often they will share what's difficult for them and they feel safe. So you have to go first. You just do it. And honestly, we're all doing this. We're all reading into a relationship. How far, how safe am I? How deep can this go? We're all thinking that. So if you go first, then you say you can go deep. You can say hard things to me. I'm not going to judge you because I don't want to be judged.

And so it's risky to go first because the other person might think you're crazy. But in my experience, you usually get a good, friendly head nod of empathy. You usually get a, oh, I know what you mean. Or I don't know what you mean, but I'm so sorry. And that must be so hard. Usually you're met with compassion in my experience. Not that you always are.

And certainly those things could be used against you. But I would say that still isn't the norm. There are a lot of people that want this right now. And so in risking it, I really hope and believe people are going to be met with gratitude that you were vulnerable because they're ready for this too. So talk about the different kinds of friends that we should have, that we should be, because you run through those in the book too.

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to do and I thought was really important to do was to take a look at what types of friends there are, because one thing I noticed in my conversations with people was that everybody kind of had expectations that were unmet.

So they were expecting a best friend to be there for everything, to make the plans. I noticed there was just a lot of expectations around friendship. And I wanted to build categories of friendships because I knew that there were people that would be good at one thing but not good at

another thing. And if they could see themselves and go, this is what I bring to a friendship. And it's interesting because I posted it on Instagram. And I mean, the comments are fantastic. And a lot of people are asking their friends, you know, well, what kind of friend am I? And they're tagging all their friends and saying, what do you think? And they don't know. And they're asking their friends. And it's so cute, the conversations that follow. But here's a couple or a few, the encourager, the foxhole friend, the one that gets in the trenches with you, the challenger, the one that calls out your stuff, the fun one.

the planner, the one that makes all the plans and remembers your birthday, the sage, the wise one that will give advice. And so what I...

noticed was if we could view friendship that way, then we would look for different types of friends rather than expecting one or two or three to meet all our needs. Because throughout history, again, when you live in a village, a plethora of people are ministering to you and taking care of you. And so my hope was if you could see what someone brings to the table, then maybe you'd be okay that they forgot your birthday, right? Like they're not good at that because I'm not their role, right? It's not probably, they're probably not going to, they can try, but they're probably not going to get better at that.

And so if we could just see each other with our limitations, but also our strengths, I think we give grace a lot easier. Mm-hmm.

I love this book. Jenny Allen, find your people building deep community in a lonely world out February 22nd. You could pre-order everywhere now, or if you're hearing this beyond that date, make sure you get yourself a copy. I've already decided that I'm getting this for several of my girlfriends to say, listen, I feel like I could be a better friend. I feel like I could reach out, be more involved, not expect others to organize or feel left out if something doesn't get done, but that

It takes energy and investment, but it's worth and the dividends we get from it are far beyond what we invest, especially in the beginning. So I think it's a beautiful thing. I want to make sure while we have you too, that we ask about if gathering, please explain what that is.

Well, what's so fun is this is such a natural extension of this book because my hope is that all over the world, and there will be, there's thousands of events happening where you can gather with your friends and talk about the Lord and talk about what he's doing in your life. It's real. It's awesome.

very honest and we talk about what we're all going through right now. I mean, we're kicking off the whole thing just talking about anxiety and mental illness and how do we fight these things that I think so many of us are either facing or people that we love are facing. We're trying to really look at the mountains and the walls and the darkness and the lies and all the harder things that it feels like we're up against right now. And just to remember together that God is bigger than all of it. And so

I'm excited. It's every denomination. It's all over the world. We're, we'll be in over a hundred countries and it's just super fun to think so many women coming together in unity to say, we love God and we want to see him, um,

to watch our lives reflect that belief in a bigger way. So March 4th and 5th. Yep. Yeah. I was going to ask you for details because I know that it's in person, but that sells out within like two minutes of you guys posting it online. But there are ways that, as you said, people around the world can actually dial into this. So tell us. Absolutely. So March 4th and 5th, it will be live streamed everywhere and you can sign up at if 2022.com.

Okay, fantastic. You're going to speak.

What else do we expect? Yes. Oh, there's so many great, great people that are contributing. Christine Kane and Matt Chandler. And we've got a story coming out of Afghanistan that you are going to love. That is a woman that is on the ground that decided to go back in. She's from Afghanistan. She decided she was outside of the country at the time. She went in when everybody else was leaving and she is there like ministering to people and bringing the gospel. And it's just so exciting. Her story is probably one of the things I'm most excited about.

Well, we look forward to seeing that. And again, the book is fantastic. Find your people by Jenny Allen, building deep community in a lonely world. And I think it speaks to so much of what people have experienced with isolation and feeling lonely and not thinking or wondering, am I the person who's supposed to reach out? And should I wait for people coming to me? Like you said, that, that thought of we come out the womb looking for people, but looking for somebody looking for us. And I think everybody feels the need to be needed, but worries about appearing needy. You talk about that in the book and you talked about it today too.

But really these investments in friendships, it's what we're built for. It's what gives our life meaning and help in the mountains and the valleys. So thank you for writing this. Like I said, I'm sharing it with people in the hopes that I become a better friend too. Oh, I love it. And that was my dream for it. Hopefully people can come together around it and their friendships will deepen. That's my prayer. Jenny, thanks for joining us on Live in the Bream and congrats on the new book. Thanks for having me, Shannon. ♪♪♪

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