The Power of Community
Michelle Ferguson

Sarah and I were on Highway 99 headed back to Fresno Pacific University. I sat thoughtfully in the passenger seat. “I really wish you had a brother so that I could marry into your family,” I said. We chuckled, but we both knew that it came from deep within me. In that moment I felt a stirring in my heart: life was seeping into my soul as I began to feel things I had never known before.

It is not good to be alone

I transferred to FPU as a sophomore after bottoming out spiritually. During my freshman year, struggles I had pushed away in the excitement of my first years as a Christian refused to be ignored. I found myself face to face with the part of me I feared and hated the most: I was overwhelmed by homosexual feelings for my roommate. I tried to ignore them. I tried to pray them away. I tried to convince myself I did not feel “that way” toward her. I felt discouraged and guilty. And when the opportunity arose to act on my feelings, I felt helpless to resist. I spent the rest of the school year struggling with the conflict between my behavior and my faith.

When I transferred to FPU and started my sophomore year in a new school with no friends, I still had a whole host of “issues” to deal with. I had spent the summer in repentance before God, and as the school year began I took the first steps toward reconciliation with God and with myself. I did not know how (or if) I was going to change, but I knew obedience to my Lord was imperative. The Word of God had cut that message into my heart, and I was determined to walk it out. That year I learned that homosexuality was not my main problem. It was a symptom of wounds I had borne since childhood, and it was a desperate attempt to cope with the pain and emptiness I felt. In order to experience wholeness in Christ I was going to have to dig beneath the surface of my homosexuality and address the roots of my brokenness.

It may seem too simple to say that my real need was for genuine and intimate relationship, but the more I learn about myself and people in general the more I am convinced that the human need for connection should never be underestimated.

I did not grow up with strong or healthy relationships in my life. Seeing the dysfunction between my parents, at an early age I rejected connecting with them. I retreated within myself and detached from life. It was not safe to trust others. I kept everyone out in order to protect myself. Within my walls was a lonely place to be. As a little girl I yearned for a friend. Someone to trust. Someone to know me for real who would love me.

By the time I was in junior high school that yearning had translated into sexual attraction for other girls. I desperately wanted to connect with another girl, and somehow the intimacy of a romantic/sexual relationship seemed to be the answer. I was dulling my loneliness and pain with alcohol and hoping for the perfect best friend to enter my life. I was drawn to “needy” people, and I was determined to fill their needs so that they could be happy. I did not realize that my desire to fill their need was really my way of coping with my unmet needs.

A vision of community

My second year at FPU I took an Anabaptist theology class. We read The Anabaptist Vision and wrote a paper reflecting on Harold Bender’s summary of the distinctive elements of Anabaptism. This assignment helped me find the words for everything God was forming in me. Anabaptism gave me the language with which to articulate and hear the solution for my need. Within the context of community, defined as a voluntary and genuine brotherhood, I saw the possibility for healing and wholeness become a reality. I found my theological home.

For the next two years at FPU I sought out relationships in which to explore this new concept of community. I participated in an accountability and Bible study group with several other girls. We called ourselves On Belay. It was in this group that I formed relationships that taught me healthy same-sex friendship.

As I grew in these friendships, I noticed deep changes occurring in me. As my basic needs for relationship began to be genuinely and appropriately filled, I struggled less and less with homosexuality. By the time I graduated I no longer identified myself as homosexual. My new understanding of relationships and the concept of community brought great healing and helped me reorient my life.

Home is where community is

On Belay gave me the opportunity to experience a new model for same-sex peer relationships that proved powerful; however, my deeper need was for family. Even though my parents’ marriage and our family had been affected by coming into relationship with Jesus Christ, the history of those relationships caused me to look elsewhere for family community. God gave me such a community when Sarah Bergen, one of the girls in On Belay, introduced me to her family.

I automatically felt comfortable and welcomed by her parents Stan and LeeAnn and sisters Melissa and Laura. As I got to know Sarah’s family, I was more and more amazed: I was seeing people who were the kind of family I had longed for all my life.

It is no coincidence that the Bergen family is rooted in Mennonite Brethren faith. Over the last five years I have seen the theology that won my heart worked out in the daily lives of this family. The Anabaptist focus on nachfolge Christi (“following”) is embodied by the relationships between this father, mother and three daughters. As I met and became familiar with the extended Bergen families I realized that this was indeed a community from which to learn community.

In good Anabaptist fashion, I could only learn community by practicing community. The Bergens’ extension of relationship to me each time I visited with Sarah reinforced the work God was doing in my life. Slowly I released and repented of my lifestyle of detachment and began forming authentic ties within the family. This has been a terrifying process at times. However it is the way toward wholeness.

“You belong”

Last November I was struggling with seeing myself as part of the family instead of just “one of Sarah’s friends she brings home.” I wanted to belong, but I was still maintaining a measure of detachment. We sat around Stan and LeeAnn’s dining room table and talked about my feelings. It was hard to be so honest, especially about my fears, but I knew I could trust them with my heart.

I cried, talked and shared about how I had never really let people in before. I told them that one way of keeping my distance was to hold on to the thought that I was only tied to the family through Sarah, that I did not have a place of my own. LeeAnn reached across the table, took my hand and said, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”

My heart trembled.

She said it again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.” My heart released its last bit of detachment and I let her words in. Again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”

My heart allowed itself to receive words of life, and a wound I had carried for years felt its first healing touch. LeeAnn repeated her words slightly differently, “You belong in this family.” I took my place in the family in that moment. LeeAnn and Sarah shed a few tears. As Sarah and I got into the car to drive back home to Sacramento, Stan hugged me. Even when I started to let go, he held on. His prolonged embrace repeated LeeAnn’s words in his own voice.

Power to transform

By no means has this family exhibited or offered perfection, but it has modeled a lifestyle of love, honesty, intimacy, sacrifice, commitment and interdependence that I have never seen before. Being welcomed into this family has also been my initiation into Mennonite faith and spirituality. The depth of community shared by the Bergens has been shaped by their commitment to Anabaptism and my experience in the Bergen community has shaped the Anabaptist identity to which I have committed myself. This sounds like the truest form of discipleship I could ever describe.

Discipleship is not just Sunday schooling people to know the right things. It is binding oneself to others in community and living out the gospel. Harold Bender writes, “The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief, or of subjective ‘experience,’ rather than one of the transformation of life. They demanded an outward expression of the inner experience. Repentance must be ‘evidenced’ by newness of behavior” (The Anabaptist Vision, italics mine).

As I sat in Shafter MB Church for the Christmas Eve service and heard Sarah’s aunt, Ruth Bergen, share her story of dealing with cancer, I heard her telling a story more of community than anything else. After thanking everyone who had prayed, brought food to her home, visited and made visible other forms of support, she said, “The kingdom of God is truly at hand.” I sat amidst that community and my heart said, “Amen.” With Bergens beside, in front and behind me, I was surrounded with examples of the kingdom, of true brotherhood. Though we await the coming of the fullness of God’s kingdom, it is in community that we live in that kingdom here and now and experience healing and wholeness.

Ever since I began to feel life take hold in my heart through this community, I have heard a call to share my story with the larger Mennonite community. God’s Spirit has prompted me to say “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it… But (I) urge you, brethren, to excel still more” (1 Thess. 4:9-10).

As Anabaptists we have a certain understanding of the community of God that can offer a prophetic voice in our day. We only need to live it out, to embody it. By confession we do not truly have faith unless we are putting into practice. Brothers and sisters, my life has been changed because of the power found in community. Let us live so as to continue to see God’s power manifested in many others.

This article was published in The Christian Leader (March 2005).