Welcome to Technically Short with two of my favorite people right now and that
will be Thomas and I'm back Andrew Vergato. Yeah today's episode we're gonna
talk about community. It's gonna be really good so get your chair, get you a
popcorn, get whatever you're about to do for the day and get ready to listen
about community. Yeah so we're gonna be talking about, sorry, talking about
anything around community about like Shawn was saying before we started
recording about what the meaning of community is, what a meaning of
what it's like to have good community, what it's like that you can have, also you
can have bad community around you, what it's like to have, to not have community
around you and our own experiences within that. And Andrew, since you're the
guest, do you have a particular experience with community with maybe
whenever you first realized that you wanted community, that you would want to
share? Sure, actually in the last episode that I was a part of I ended up talking
a little bit about my youth experience and I can probably dive a little bit
more into that now with community. Before that I was a loner, I didn't have any
community, I would spend all my time in my room by myself and so I was very
isolated, I was very separate from other people and once I started getting around
youth I was so awkward because of my isolation, my self-isolation, like I
could not speak more than one or two word answers to any question anyone would
give me, like even my closest friends in youth, even the people that I would
quote-unquote talk to the most, they were doing most of the talking, I was sort of
just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. I was completely awkward, completely shy
and but it felt better than being by myself. I'm a very big introvert, I've
always been an introvert but as time has gone on, but as time has gone on
I've sort of been, I'm not switching so much, I could probably call switching,
like I find that I need a whole lot less time with myself, yeah and I need a whole
lot more time with other people and I love hanging out with people, I love being
a goofball, I love making people laugh and just entertaining people and I think
that really started back in youth but it really grew once I started getting into
our young adult ministry, shout out Inspire Collective, Wednesday nights, young
adult come, be there, exactly or be square, be square because you're not around.
Wow, so deep, so deep, so deep, so deep, but it really started manifesting more in me once I
started getting into the adult ministry that I was like, wow, I'm actually with
people who love Jesus, genuinely love one another and care for one another, like
when I was younger part of the reason I have always had a hard time interacting
with people is because I always thought everyone was internally judging me, like
everywhere I'd go, everything I would say, I always thought everyone would like
whisper behind my back whenever I would enter a room or leave a room like, man
I'm glad you're gone now, but just seeing like the genuine love of everyone around
me, the genuine care for everybody really helped me start to crack open that shell,
open me up a little bit to get into the community more and it started making me
fall in love with interacting with people and building people up and being
there for people and listening to people and just talking to people, just
experiencing life with others. I have a kind of a similar experience with
whenever I first started coming back going to
Amplify, that's where really my first exposure to, like in the most
recent years to community really came from and because I was in a state where
I was living by myself for maybe about a year at that time and Andrew's over here
taking pictures. Be real time. And I remember I was invited by a friend a few
hours before at the time the Inspire Collective wasn't called that, it was called
the U before and she wasn't particularly a person of faith, but she was
dealing with a friend who had recently passed away and she didn't know how to
she was trying to figure out how to handle that, the grief of that and a
friend invited, one of her friends invited her to go to the U at Amplify
so she invited me. I go there for the first time, I walk in, I go with her for
the first time and I walk in the doors and I think it's the weirdest thing ever
because I didn't realize that was a healthy community. I walked in, I just
see all these people smiling and I'm like why are these people so happy? What
the heck? Like what do they have to be? I thought it was like, I just walked into a
cult. I got Nick Pike just beeline for me, like hey man how's it going? He came and
shook my hand and I was still very much inwardly inward on myself, but like
eventually like you said Andrew, the more I started coming back and
showing up, whenever I started to become more consistent with that, I
started opening up more and I kind of also can express the point of like being
an introvert but also realizing I'm having more extroverted tendencies and
well I've heard this from somebody before where I forget who had said it,
but like somebody who said it, but they were pretty much
saying there's no such thing as introvert and extrovert, it's just you
have a leaning, more of a leaning in one direction or the other and there's
benefits in both. So people that are more tend to be an introvert should
practice being more extroverted and vice versa because whenever like you
want to be in community, you want to be talkative, you don't be kept to
yourself, you don't want to be all closed off, but then whenever
you're by yourself or maybe like you like maybe you're
there just like you want to get your work done or you have to put, yes the
time you have to put your head down and not be in community. There are times when
there are times not like a season but like maybe like times during the day or
days where being community isn't the best thing in the moment for what you
want to accomplish. So like it's learning how to navigate between the
introverted and extroverted tendencies. I think that that's something I feel like
if more people understood, there'd be, I think people would be a little
more curious about the other thing that they could be doing. I feel like a lot
of people cut themselves off because they're like oh I'm extrovert so I can't
do that. I'm an introvert so I'm an introvert so I can't go out and do those
things. I'm too introverted for that and I think that's a mistake a lot of people
make. How about you Shawn? Honestly for me I think community is so important
because to be honest I didn't have community most of my life and I was an
introvert when I was younger like when I was a kid. I became an extrovert later on
because of cells and stuff like where you just have to speak or you didn't eat.
So like you you either gonna die of starvation metaphorically speaking or
you wouldn't have to be able to be able to talk to people. So I became really
good at speaking to people because of that. But community is so important
because like there is a time in my life where I didn't have any community and I
had a couple people who would support but there's a difference between a couple
people supporting you and the community right. So like most of the churches I
grew up on in life they did not have any community. So like you would go
to church you would sit down the pastor knows your name and you might have like
a couple people you know and they would say like hey how are you doing blah blah
then it would just you would just go right back to live in however you wanted
to live. And if you were hurting in any type of way nobody was reaching out to
check on you or if they were hurting in any type of way they wasn't really
reaching out to get somebody to help them as well. And when you don't have
community you don't grow. So I would be in a constant state of before I
got the amplify I'd be in the constant state of going to church then Monday
through Friday living kind of mediocre lukewarmness and Friday Saturday party
and then coming back to church on Sunday. Because I didn't have any community so
it's just me. So I'm out here just doing my own thing and I would say friends or
it friends when it comes to community or not like it's not just your friends you
have to have like a community a whole support system and God gives you those
and healthy homes but I didn't have a healthy home for most of my life. My mom
was really good and my brother was really good but like I didn't have my
dad he was he had stepped out of that area so I grew up not having what a
healthy home was but like it was just one of those things where you just had
to like you were like you just my mom knew then like hey God can fix to all
the stuff that she can't do right. She's a mom who was working for two kids
single mom married by the way which is even more crazy the story gets way
crazier. My dad became a good guy later on in life but that's not a point
the point is community he didn't have that when he grew up either but community
is so important for you to grow and take off where you need to be. I think like
one thing we all kind of mentioned is how community kind of allowed us to open
up more and be it being in good community being surrounded by good
community like what that does what that does for us it goes along with the
concept of iron sharpening iron if you're in good community and if you're
alongside your brother or your brothers and your brothers and sisters in
Christ then you're going like you're gonna make each other sharper you're
gonna make each other stronger and make each other stronger firmer you're
going to and like Shawn is going to cut each other that you're gonna cause
people to grow you know you're not just gonna grow the people around you are
gonna grow and I have a particular story about like it's a very prominent point
about whenever like well probably a prominent point of like the first time I
opened up in the you and a pastor Kels who was the was I guess the college
pastor at the time and he he was talking about his sermon was about agoraphobia
it was about like whether it was like about your innermost fears and he does
things I've never seen any I still haven't seen other pastors do and I
really want something else to do it at some point he opened up the mic mm-hmm I
think you were there for this you I feel like you were I think you were coming
I think you might have been I don't know if you were at that you yet
I definitely was at that time okay I was there before Kels got oh gotcha gotcha
okay um and he opened up the mic and he was like okay if anybody forget his
exact words but he was like okay if anybody wants to share their pretty much
thing that anybody want to share their inner most fear with everyone mm-hmm
that's like just raise your hand we give you this mic and I remember thinking
right before that kind of feeling he's opened up the mic before if I build if
I remember I he opened up the mic before so I told myself like okay if I had a
voice my and I was like okay if he opens up the mic this time I'm gonna say I'm
gonna speak but and what about whatever it is and he opened up the mic and so I
was maybe the second first or second person to take the mic and at the time
I was like yes okay well like what is that almost what are you afraid of I was
like I'm afraid of people I was I was afraid I was afraid to I was like I'm
afraid of people about what they think like I say I even a polite remember
apologizing I in the might not look I was looking at the ground handling at my
feet and I was like I was like I'm sorry for the people I just stare at because I
don't know I just don't know the words to say I kind of just look at you
wanting to say something I don't know so like don't think that I don't like that
I don't like you or that I angry at you or something for some reason I just have
no word no words are coming to my mind and it was then then like I like other
people start opening up and they came up to me afterwards after everybody else
opened up they came up to me like thank me for opening up yeah because I pretty
much gave almost like gave them permission to do it because they're like
oh if he can be that vulnerable I can be that vulnerable too and it also helped
like opening up in community also help with like you know you guys know Stephen
press and he came up to me at some point and he was like after eventually he came
up to me start talking to me at some point in the future but eventually he
told me though that was that when you opened up then that's what that's what
let me know that I actually could be your friend because I thought you didn't
like me yes that's really yeah I really like that I go off of what you were
saying about iron sharpening iron I mean yeah it's it's riddled throughout the
whole Bible I mean go all the way back to the beginning in Genesis is not good
for man to be alone God did not intend for us to be alone it's not just talking
about man and woman but he's talking about brother and brother sister and
sister he's talking about people on linking arms and being there for each
other how did the apostles go out how did they got to preach the gospel they
go out by themselves they went out in pairs to keep each other accountable to
keep each other going to keep each other motivated I mean the times that I'm
around people is when I feel the most motivated to be the most honest to do
the best I mean when people go out to exercise it's so much easier by yourself
to be like okay that was enough but whenever you're like man this person
I'm still standing beside my friend he's like got ten more reps than me right now
I keep on going I got you know it's a healthy and good competition and I'm
being around other people in a healthy way it's a healthy community that
you're surrounding yourself with man it just builds you up and grows you and
when you have that vulnerability like you did and I actually remember that night
specifically that's one of my earliest memories of you that's probably my first
core memory of you that was like this is like standing out to me about you was
your vulnerability it's your openness and like that just can shift the room in a
moment from a happy fun mood to a okay this is let's get into a deeper subject
this actually open up and grow with each other and actually solve issues that are
much deeper mm-hmm I see that's the beauty of having a healthy good
community you can be vulnerable yeah because when people are healthy they're
able to help others get to a healthy state when people are unhealthy if you
try to do that so I've all be vulnerable when you're in a bad community they would
just lead you to not want to do it again because the the ridicule and neglect and
people saying things and people doing things that were not positive would help
you to go further in the shell rather than you to get out the shell you know
and it's it's very important because God called us all of the believers all
believers as Christ to be the church right so being the church being the
ecclesia which is like a family on steroids if I can say it like that like
it's somebody who really truly cares about you in every single way back in
the day that's how it was and when you have a good Godly community that's how
it still is yeah and um that's one thing I love about amplify I've never seen my
entire life and I've been to plenty churches Catholics Pentecostal Methodist
Easter Orthodox Baptist Southern Baptist East Eastern Baptist holiness
Pentecostal you name it I've probably been there and been a whole bunch of
different churches but having a community I've never had one like
amplified that's why I'm here today because it's like so refreshing to know
that everybody loves and cares about you and you love and care about everybody
else and you guys are on one mission which is the focus of God like the love
of God the to pursue God like never before and as you're doing so then you
are able to bring other people to God because it's a healthy it's like an
overflowing love that like first you seek the father then the father's love
comes on you then you just bring it to your friends and your family in your
workplace or your school wherever you're at and just like that more people are
coming to the community because it's a healthy place actually this is hit me
real quick just directly to the people listening right now if you're having
trouble with being consistent in community in a community and maybe it's
not necessarily even your fault maybe it's something to do with your work
maybe it's something like if community want to be a part of but you can't make
it in person maybe it's something that you want to be consistent with but for
some reason it feels like you can't and I would do encourage you to try to find
other avenues that other avenues or other groups other things that you can
be consistent with even if you want to keep going to that one on that base is
the basis that you are I want to encourage you to find a community that
you can be consistent with whether it be a on online community with people with a
good Christian community if that's all you're a physical actually able to do
or if it's it is an in-person community which would be preferable but if it is
an in-person community something that where you feel comfortable where people
are able you feel not just where people are being vulnerable but where also you
feel comfortable with being vulnerable and where it's very where it eventually
becomes obvious that it's a place where everybody is for everybody and where
everybody's there for everybody else's benefit so I kid if you go into a
position where the leader is a head the leader is just there to be on a platform
be for themselves like then you don't want to be there you want to be in a
community where the person at the head sees themselves at the bottom and sees
themselves as a servant so that whenever you walk you walk in you feel
like you've been served and that you feel like okay I didn't know what I was
walking into but I'm believing feel I'm leaving feeling like I found it found a
healthy home yeah yeah and I would say this is just coming in my mind that I
know a lot of people I didn't deal with social anxiety I was just very awkward
but I know plenty of people who have social anxiety or who had social
anxiety and it can be difficult and it can be not just like oh it's a struggle
to go and get in a big community but sometimes it can be unhealthy to get
into a giant community and open up to everyone all at once if you're doing
all these big struggles I would just encourage people who are having a hard
time getting into a community that you don't have to start in like some if
you're a Christian in a ministry with like a couple hundred people in it or
and if you're just trying to find it in like a different place like you don't
have to find it with like 20 30 50 different people you can find it with
just that one person that you might see occasionally that you connect with the
best the person that you find the most comfort in the person that you trust the
most to be more vulnerable vulnerable with and to go deeper with because
sometimes it's hard and also unhealthy to get into a big community and then air
all your dirty laundry to everybody it's it's best to do that with one-on-one
interactions or one or two interactions people that you can rely on and trust
because there are going to be a lot of very good people in every ocean say in
every community but like in a good healthy community there's gonna be a lot
of healthy people but that doesn't mean that everyone's always gonna use what
you are saying in the best way possible so sometimes it's you have to have
different levels of that you have to go more intimate with the people that you
can trust the most and then as you get deeper and that as you feel more
comfortable with that maybe open up a little bit with some more people and then
just open up your community a little bit more because it's because social anxiety
is not a small thing to deal with it's something that needs to be dealt with
over time something that also cannot be treated or dealt with by completely
isolating yourself or shutting yourself off from everybody right it's it can
definitely feel easier to do that but it's definitely not the healthy way
either if you're struggling with that I would say find somebody and if you can't
find someone directly then find a therapist because there's always gonna
be a therapist who can help you walk through that and they're paid to listen
to your problems so they'll listen to you and it'll take care of you in the
best way possible yeah I am but yeah I think that's really good like the stress
the point of like if you aren't comfortable amongst a lot of people to
focus on maybe just the one and because like you already yeah you said Andrew
where like you they went out in pairs mm-hmm and where they possibly went out
in pairs and they feel like you can have community that just like by finding
that one person that you can be vulnerable with and like he said maybe
expounding later you know I there's like obviously you don't need me you don't
need to or you and you shouldn't tell every single person your deepest darkest
secret so um but there are some people that should know those there are people
that you should feel comfortable with with giving those two kids holding those
things in you is it any good and if you tell the wrong person that's dangerous
too yeah so I feel like it takes a little bit of like self-reflection but
also it takes like okay who am I the most comfortable around it just like
sometimes those things just kind of happen you're like okay this person I
can relate to more yeah for me it like for me it's like Andrew Andrew and I
kind of just like I don't know how we just started talking and you were a nice
and so I'm just moved in so yeah no you have to have those different levels you
have to have different layers you can't put everyone at the same layer you can't
be that vulnerable with everyone it's in a layer because not only does that open
yourself up to people who might misuse that but also it might make you more
callous to the problems that you're sharing it might make it a little less
deep a little less true and authentic to yourself whenever you open up let's say
you're open you're not about anxiety if you say it to every single person that
you meet about it you are probably a whole lot less likely to get one good
consistent answer from everyone because you're opening up to like 50 different
people you get 50 different people's advice you get 30 different things and
then none of them are gonna stand out from the other and you're just gonna end
up taking out their advice and it's all gonna dilute each other so you need to
make sure that you have those core consistent people and then a couple
layers up you can open up about some smaller things and then you can have
people who are a layer out from that where it's just like your broad
community like hey you're my friend I can have a good laugh with you I can have
a good chat with you but we never are like opening up like man this is the
thing I'm really struggling with it's called your inner and outer circle yeah
yeah discernment is something that you have to have for bringing people into
your inner circle mm-hmm and like my brother Thomas and my brother Andrew and
Silas and Brandon Josiah and a couple other people you can have to make a
circle so like it's important to have a circle of but that all starts with
having a good community so you have to go find a community so reach out send
your nearest church if you're not near amplify we would love to take you in if
you are near amplify we love to take you in but if you can't find another church
that's about God and focused on God and you'll find a healthy community healthy
communities exist make sure you're getting plugged into one because we need
your health God wants your health we want we all want good health for you so
yeah I think we didn't really I guess we touched on a little bit about very
slightly on like unhealthy community well we should still talk about it and
like I guess I will have to like there isn't like too much to say like to dive
into a deep because we have already talked about the importance of good
community and what good community does so it's like just to say like what what
bad community is we can already like touch like it's like people that you if
you tell them your if you tell them your secrets they do tell other people or
they're either around you and they're influencing you in ways they're pulling
you away from God yeah and that's like that that's I would say if they're being
influenced by actually what me rewind I had the word influence is floating in my
mind because anything everything is everything you do influences somebody
else which means everything everybody else does around you influences you and
it's stated so many other people so many people say it that you are the average
of your five closest friends so like the five your five closest people to you are
gonna be if that's how you're gonna turn out like somebody said you show me your
five closest friends I'll show you your future yeah and I feel like that is like
that can go one or either one way or the other that can either go actually go
three ways it can go you can grow actually yeah you can grow you can go
backwards but it's a lot easier to stay where you're at hmm so like if you want
a community where you're gonna grow which is really the only kind of good
community in my opinion then you want to be around you want to be around those
people that are gonna hold you accountable whenever you mess up now
the people that are gonna tell you it's okay yeah you want to tell me around the
people that are going to like see they're gonna sit you down and say hey
Shawn hey Andrew hey Thomas like what you're doing is like what you're doing
just isn't right what you're doing isn't okay and like this is what you can be
doing instead and like yeah I don't know something else want to take you know
that's I like that a lot on that I would say in the port importance of that you
need to definitely make sure that you're surrounding yourself with the best
people possible the people that you want to be more like if you are struggling
with alcohol don't sound or sound yourself with alcohol sound surround
yourself with people who have gotten sober if you want to deal with issues in
your life that you're showing with surrounding yourself with people who have
overcome those things that you are trying that you're going through with
right now because that's the best way to grow if you're starting yourself with
people that are dealing with the same thing with you and are in the same spot
as you but they're complicit in it they're just gonna drag you right down
with them yeah but I also say that it's important to mentor and bring people up
as well so if you're bringing if you're bringing a bunch of if you're surrounding
yourself with a bunch of people that are better than you make sure that you also
maybe not as many people but like if you have five really close friends that are
extremely faithful extremely strong in their faith that can come continue
continually growing and becoming better people every single day and are pushing
you to be the same maybe add one friend to that who is not nearly as good in
space and try and bring them up find that limit for you find that balance
where you can be like okay if I am surrounding myself with these people I
can grow is and I can continue to grow if I have one person that is that is in
a worse spot but maybe if I have two people I'm not having that big of an
impact if I'm at three people there then they're bringing me down yeah you have
find that balance and try and bring people up with you because if other
people are bringing you up I mean you're called to not just be brought up but to
bring people up with you I think that's good I think truthfully as all of us all
all Christians all people in general should have people who are pouring into
us people who are on the same level as us and people were pouring into so we
should have I agree 100% Andrew we should have we should and Thomas that we
should have three like three sets of friends right like so you should have
people who are wiser than you that you can go for wise counsel you have people
on your peers who are same level as you and then you all the wisdom that you've
been getting from wise counsel you should be able to give to your peers and
the people you're leading on so like the people who are under you the people the
next generation that you're leading into so those are important and all this comes
from has having a good community because like if you have a good leaders because
the Bible says it's plain as simple as um bad company corrupts good manners so
if you surround yourself with bad company even if you're the strongest
person and they'll bring you down right that's what the Bible says and God is
right why because if all your friends are
partying and drinking and you're the only one one day that it's gonna be easy
for you to be complacent and to do and whatever they're doing so the best thing
you can do is not surround yourself with something that you're struggling with
like Andrew said that that would be the best thing so like if you're sleeping
around you shouldn't be hanging around with people who also are sleeping around
because then you both were not getting free right so you need to be called
higher and the way you can do that is to surround yourself with people who are
wiser than you and then your peers and then pour into them and for in the
people the next generation yeah yeah I like going off the analogy of drinking
if you had a problem if you had a problem with drinking but you were given
but you were but because you surround yourself with people that had the same
problem as you and then you got out of it now you can use that wisdom to help
other people get out of it too absolutely and it's like it's not just
like giving back sorry about that noise and you're made up see it's okay you're
good man my train my train just crashed it's not about keeping back that's where
you were yeah okay yeah it's not just well no it's not just giving back giving
like giving what you're giving what you got back to the community it's like God
gave you a gift to be able to give the wisdom to be able to get out of the
position that you were in how the pit that you're in so that so that you can
use that testimony to help and wisdom to bring others out as well absolutely
so I think like that's the power of community in my opinion because
everybody isn't everybody has a pit everybody has pits and everybody has to
go through trials and they're never ever the only ones going through that trial
never so like like that's one of the many many values of community but the
main one is growth yeah the main the main value in community is growth and if
there isn't growth in your community get a new community I agree because then
it's not a good community yeah no growth its means is not good cuz you're either
for my famous brother Thomas carney where's that guy that legend of a guy he
said you either grow or you're dying I don't think I was the first one to say
that I think I honestly think that's a good place to end it I think how do you
feel like this was a really great conversation I really enjoyed this
episode yeah it's probably one of my favorites definitely especially because
Andrew's here yeah you add on to the Adelaide why yeah you add a lot of
substance all the anointing coming off by Andrew no he's just naturally has red
cheeks yeah guys so thank you for listening I don't really think we have
do we have any fun questions that we want to do this time Shawn do you always
want to wrap it up oh I guess we got a fun question fun question call it's
coming from caller number one caller number one whoa
yeah call it what we're always that's crazy
all the caller number one say no he did does catch up belong on stake in any case
in life no never never thank you it is a sin against heaven and earth may you
experience the gnashing of teeth my answer for this was honestly I honestly
thinking can only if like somebody cooked terribly and you don't want to
offend so much like you use barbecue sauce to catch up on like the state so
you're not telling how much are you covering the state though if it's really
bad it just depends on how bad it is like I feel like that one of us like
well done it's like super chewy that like the whole time like I like my stuff
to have some pink and when I was a kid I didn't know that so I just say well done
to everything yeah yeah yeah yeah I've already heard it too if you listen to
the hallway through you know you know I also agree with Andrew and it's a sin
but I think that's a good place to wrap up this episode guys thank you for
listening if you already if you haven't already subscribe like share and give us
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