Cliques and Community

Photo by Amelia Grace Photography

 Cliques and Community 

ByTracee Persiko 

Right now, I’m sitting in a Starbucks watching a group of high school girls hang out. I listen as they talk about their day, and thought, “you know…nothing has really changed about the conversations and topics of high school.” 

We are a culture that operates out of created groups. We learn how to “belong” through gravitating towards like-minded people. Every high school has the same social groups now as they did 15 years ago when I was there. 

We called our like-minded group of friends our community, but in reality they were cliques. Cliques do not allow room for community.

I watch these girls and laugh because my friends now are so different. My closest friends are made up of a mismatch group of gifts, personalities, fears, looks, and passions. One of my closest friends and I joke all the time that we would not have been friends in high school. Our groups and judgments would not have let that happen.

Community ceases to be community when it becomes a clique.

There is no room for community in a clique. Cliques are closed to anyone new joining in. Cliques enforce a hierarchy of judgment someone needs to pass in order to be allowed in.

It makes me sad when I see adult cliques in the church. Clique mentality has no room in the community of the church body. We are all made in His image. We are all invited to walk a life journey with the same God. 

Look at the disciples.

Some would say that the 12 disciples were a clique. No one else was allowed to be a disciple. But look at the mixed match up of those guys!

The community of disciples consisted of different personalities, passions, interests, looks, temperaments, gifts, strong wills, extroverts, introverts, popular, and the loathed. There was no reason these guys should’ve been doing life together – they didn’t go together. They didn’t make sense.

But isn’t this true community?

Community is made up of all of those who are trying to do life well, and follow after the invitation to do life with Him.

Community takes a chance on people. Community sees and wants the heart. Community is inviting.

What are your thoughts on community?

What makes community for you?