If you haven’t read Part IV, here it is.
Mike, Jeff, and Aaron were great guys, but I needed to live closer to work. I would normally get home from revival services at about 1 AM, and had to be back up at four in order to walk to work. I’d work until ten, which gave me just enough time to walk home, shower, and leave with Mike for school at noon. After school it was time for church again. I was exhausted.
Glen and Will, whom I had met during classes, started talking about getting a place together. Even though moving made the most sense to me, I struggled with making the decision. I have always been loyal to a fault. To this day I still find it very difficult to accept job offers (even for greater pay) if I’m with another company (even if that company sucks). So, in considering moving, I felt as if I was abandoning my friends.
I struggled for almost a month, but finally made the decision to move in with Glen and Will at the Fairfield Villa Apartments, which were much closer to school and work.
This is where it all really began for me.
I’m going to try to elucidate my feelings here, but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do them justice.
My experiences at Fairfield Villas are the most important things I have held onto from my days at BRSM. It was community. True, beautiful, amazing community.
A lot of us from the school lived there. At one point the complex as almost exclusively BRSM students. The complex was broken up into enclaves, and ours formed a community.
How to describe it?
Spontaneity.
Intuition.
Going next door to borrow sugar could turn into an all night prayer meeting. Stopping in for coffee could result in dinner and a jam session.
The mere twang of a guitar string would bring people from all corners of the complex. Someone else with a guitar. Another person with a jambe.
An outdoor BBQ was a whole enclave affair, and some nights you might find some of the girls apartments holding balcony concerts (complete with lip-syncing and aluminum foil headset microphones). I married one of those girls.
There were woods behind the complex, and many of us would go into them to pray. Some mornings it looked like a scene from a zombie movie. A bunch of slowly walking people, listing from side to side.
But it was beautiful.
Group dinners. Impromptu discussions.
I miss it so much. I’m going to talk more about BRSM before I move on, but community is what I truly miss.
That sense of togetherness. Oneness.
And it’s so much more important for me that it be in my living environment. Church can offer a sense of community, but the true beauty of it comes when you live near each other and open your lives to each other.
The Imperfect Church 