Cultivating Community in a Kingdom That Expands

Loneliness is everywhere right now—not just as a feeling, but almost as a posture people live inside. It shows up as resignation: I don’t have my people. There’s nothing here. I’m stuck. Surrounded, yet unseen. Connected digitally, but unrooted bodily and relationally.

Some of this is undeniably real. We are fragmented. Dislocated. Many have moved cities, lost extended family, lost shared rhythms. Church often feels more like programming than place. Neighborhoods feel anonymous. Everyone is busy, guarded, and tired.

But beneath the loneliness conversation, there’s a quieter assumption shaping how people respond to it—one that quietly drains agency.

We’ve come to believe that community is something you find, instead of something you cultivate.

And that belief leaves people passive, waiting, and increasingly helpless.

The Kingdom Jesus announces does not work that way.

The Kingdom Expands—It Doesn’t Wait

Jesus never speaks of the Kingdom as something static or fully formed that you eventually discover once conditions are right. He speaks of it as something alive—something that moves, presses in, takes territory, and grows quietly but relentlessly.

Seeds are sown. Fields are entered. Yeast works through dough. A harvest is already ripe.

“The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus says, “but the laborers are few.” (Matthew 9:37)

Not the consumers.
Not the critics.
The laborers.

The Kingdom doesn’t expand because people finally feel safe enough to belong. It expands because someone shows up with authority—not domination, not force, but spiritual agency—and begins to cultivate.

Isolation Feels Helpless. Cultivation Restores Authority.

Isolation trains people to feel powerless. You wait to be invited. You wait to feel welcomed. You wait for resonance, alignment, safety, chemistry.

Cultivation assumes something very different: There is ground here. There is life here. Something can grow—if I am willing to remain present.

That shift—from waiting to sowing—is the shift from helplessness to authority.

Authority, in the Kingdom, is not about control. It’s about encounterable presence.

Joshua Tree, Surf Breaks, and Unlikely Soil

Over the past stretch of time, I’ve found myself living and moving among very different groups of people—often unintentionally, often without any plan to “build community.”

In Joshua Tree, I’ve spent time with desert nomads: artists, wanderers, spiritual seekers living between worlds. People who’ve stepped outside conventional stability but haven’t stepped outside the human hunger for meaning, rhythm, and connection.

I’ve shared conversations with people living unhoused—where politeness falls away and honesty surfaces quickly. Where presence matters more than solutions. Where being willing to stay and listen is often the most dignifying act available.

I’ve surfed alongside surfer bros—men who rarely articulate emotion, but who live deeply in their bodies. Connection happens there between sets, through timing, respect, and shared risk. No ideology required.

And I’ve danced—really danced—in therapeutic, ecstatic dance communities filled with artists, expressive feelers, and people doing somatic healing. Bodies learning safety again. Nervous systems relearning trust. Community forming without words.

None of these spaces were designed to be “my people.” They weren’t curated. They weren’t evenly yoked. They weren’t ideologically aligned.

And yet—again and again—the Kingdom showed up.

Not because everyone agreed.
But because someone stayed present.

From Belonging to Encounterability

We often start with the wrong question: Where do I belong?

The Kingdom invites a different one: Am I encounterable?

Encounterable presence looks like unhurried attention, openness without agenda, willingness to be interrupted, curiosity instead of self-protection. It is love that risks being touched—and risks touching others—without trying to control the outcome.

The Kingdom does not expand when we scan rooms for belonging. It expands when we remain available long enough for encounter to happen.

Fishing for Community (The Wyoming Story)

A friend of mine in Wyoming felt deeply lonely—not dramatically, just quietly and persistently alone. He didn’t lack people. He lacked shared practice and place.

When I asked him what he loved, his whole body shifted: fishing.

The invitation wasn’t, Go make friends. It was simpler, humbler, and more powerful: go to the same fishing shop, show up at the same river, return to the same spot. Week after week.

No pressure. No networking. No forcing connection.

That’s fishing for community.

You don’t chase fish. You learn the waters. You place yourself where life already gathers. You become recognizable by presence, not performance.

Jesus didn’t accidentally say, “I will make you fishers of men.” Fishing is patient, embodied, place-based, and relational. Community forms when people keep showing up to the same waters long enough for trust to grow.

Seeds, Falling, and the End of Isolation

Jesus is relentless with agricultural imagery because it tells the truth about how the Kingdom works.

“A grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die, or it remains alone.” (John 12:24)

Isolation is what happens when the seed refuses to fall. When we hover above the soil waiting for guarantees.

Falling feels risky. It involves vulnerability, exposure, and no certainty of return. But seeds don’t ask permission. They fall into ordinary ground and trust the process.

Community grows the same way. It doesn’t begin with chemistry or affirmation. It begins with presence willing to be buried for a time.

The Heron and the Cost of Cultivation

There’s an old image of a heron piercing its own side so its young can be fed. It’s unsettling—and it should be—because it names something real.

Community often forms around someone willing to absorb cost.

Not martyrdom.
Not self-erasure.
Not resentment.

But chosen sacrifice.

Someone initiates. Someone hosts. Someone returns after awkwardness. Someone stays soft instead of armored. Someone keeps sowing presence when nothing obvious is growing yet.

Jesus does this with the apostles. He calls them before they’re healed, before they’re loyal, before they understand. Community forms around his willingness to remain encounterable—and it costs him everything.

That is how the Kingdom takes territory.

Creative Cultivation Is Ordinary and Faithful

Cultivating community rarely looks dramatic. It looks like returning to the same coffee shop, surfing the same break, dancing in the same room, walking the same neighborhood, standing in the same desert, fishing the same river.

It’s not efficient. It’s not optimized. It’s faithful.

Gardens don’t respond to urgency. They respond to return.

From Stuck to Sown

Many people aren’t lonely because community is absent. They’re lonely because no one ever taught them that they could plant.

The harvest is already ripe. The Kingdom is already near. What’s missing isn’t people—it’s cultivators.

The shift is subtle, but it changes everything:

From Why don’t I have community?
to Where am I willing to sow my presence?

From helplessness to authority.
From isolation to encounter.
From waiting to cultivation.

Community doesn’t arrive fully formed. It grows—where someone is willing to fall like seed, fish patiently, remain encounterable, and let the Kingdom expand one relationship at a time.