Jennie Allen: Find your People

So I will never forget standing in the front of the church officiating your sister's funeral.

And I was standing in front looking to the back, so you probably don't even remember this moment. You remember what happened, but I see the back door of this church open and in walks, what, seven couples of our best friends from Detroit. To watch those friends walking, man, I still get emotional about it because it meant everything. Like, oh, they're here. There's something about having a friend be there with you in your darkest time.

That means so much because you feel like you can't even stand up on your own. Welcome to family life today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson and I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our family life app. This is family life today.

We were made for community. We're going to talk about that today with Jenny Allen. She just came into Orlando, Florida. She's been on family life today. But Jenny, welcome back.

Thanks for having me, guys. I mean, you grew up in Little Rock. Yes. So you used to go on family life in your hometown. Yeah. Does it feel any different being in Orlando?

Yeah. No, this is so fun. I mean, it's a beautiful campus and I'm such a fan of Crew. And so it's so great to be here with you guys today. Well, Jenny, it's fun because for 35 years I worked with Detroit Lions wives.

So they're wives or girlfriends coming in to Detroit, of all places, and they were depressed coming into Detroit so many times. But we've done several of your books. And the thing that I love about you is how you take us closer to Jesus. But here's what the women say, and I think a lot of women say this, she's just like me. She's gone through what I've gone through, but she has a focus on Jesus that's gotten her through so much. And so that's what I feel like. You have discipled so many women over the years, and that's meant so much to me and so much to all of us.

Well, it doesn't go very far unless there are women like you leading in their places and helping people get these resources. So I'm so grateful. I feel like we're teammates then. Yeah, exactly. So great.

Yeah. Well, our middle son is a literary agent. He's our agent, and so he has books all over his house. And we were out there a couple years ago, and I pick up, I see your book, Get Out of Your Head. And I honestly, I got to be honest, pick it up and I go, oh, this is a book for women. She's a women's writer, she wrote for women. I start reading this thing. It was awesome.

Oh, thanks. I mean, I was so impressed with Jenny Allen as an author. Does that mean you get in your head too? Well, yeah, everybody does.

Everybody does. The book is not written for women, it's written for everybody. Yeah, I've noticed that more and more. There's definitely a lot more men reading my material. And so I try to be thoughtful of that as I go forward.

Certainly in the beginning, that wasn't in my mind. But yeah, the issues we face are similar. And honestly, especially lately, we are universally going through similar things.

And so there is something that is just human about all of us and the struggles we're having right now. Tell us about your family. Yeah, I love, love, love my family. They're the highlight of my life.

If my ministry were to crumble to the ground and God willed that, I would be fine with it because I want to be a great grandmother soon. And I want to just be with them all the time. My husband is Zach. We are madly in love after many hard years of marriage and doing a lot of counseling. That's sweet. We are madly in love.

And we're having just the best years of our marriage right now, which I'm so grateful for. Well, you're married to a former quarterback. I am. There you go. My friends call him QB1. I thought that was me. That was you, Dave. All right.

Here's another one. So yeah, so he is just fantastic. And he's in multiple businesses. He runs companies and sells ranches and also helps raise money for companies.

So that's what he does. It's hard to sum that up. And then my kids are, two are finishing at A&M right now. One is 22, one's 20. And the 20-year-old just fell in love with an older guy and they're getting married soon. And so I'm heading into that season.

And then my younger two, I've still got a middle schooler and a, let's see, 16-year-old that's a sophomore. So yeah, life is not boring. And you started the IF Conference. For those of our listeners that don't know what that is, explain that a little bit. This was a dream to bring women together and to hopefully just further discipleship was the goal. And so we, rather than bringing women into stadiums, we brought them into their homes. And we made the conference that usually sells out very quickly. We made it available to everyone and they host it in their churches and their homes. And so this past March, we have it every year, the first week of March. I think there were over 4,500 events happening around the world. We usually reach 144 countries. It's so beautiful because it crosses denomination lines.

It crosses just, I think, all different types of lines that exist in culture. And for two days, just women across the world come together and learn about Jesus and read the Word together and hopefully change and grow together. That's awesome.

Well, let's talk about together. I mean, your latest book, Find Your People, Building Deep Community in a Lonely World. Where did this come from? What's the vision behind it? Well, you know what's crazy is the timing of this book seems very, you know, like I was a brilliant person because who knew we would be coming out of a pandemic. I actually, this was a five year ago project that I knew I wanted to do. You know, it's just cool because it was, it was, it was forecasted for this moment prior to the pandemic existing.

God knew. But I, you know, I look back and I was in Uganda and I was visiting there and doing some work there in storytelling and with the ministry. And I was driving past, it was actually a moment first where I was driving past these two women that were beautiful and they had buckets on their head and they were walking down to get their water for the day and they were having a ball together.

They were laughing and cutting up. Then I end up in one of the villages, which I've done many times, and I just started noticing the rhythms of their lives and how communal they were. And I was jealous and I, I was bothered more than anything. I just, I thought this is really, you know, my son is from Rwanda, my youngest son. And so we go to his country a lot. We're friends with a lot of people from Rwanda. And one of the pastors there actually told me once, he said, Jennie, I feel sorry for you all. You know, we are living in each other's lives day in and day out. Like you all, I come here and it's so lonely and so isolated. And so I began to just be curious of, we just stuck in this individualistic culture called America and specifically all over the West, really. You see a very hyper, I can pull myself up by my bootstraps.

I can make it happen. And if someone does, we're so proud of them, like that was amazing. They're the hero. You know, so I just saw this twisted backwards culture of what we're supporting and what we, what we're even encouraging our kids to do. And is that what bothered you? It made me sad. Yeah. I just, I wanted something different.

I wanted us to live more like the people of Uganda and Rwanda. And so that began a journey where I, I actually, you know, interviewed people from all over the world. And I researched, you know, the history of civilization as well as what the Bible has to say about it and found a lot of troubling things. Yeah.

What was that? Like when you research our history in America, what was troubling? You know, we're the loneliest generation that has ever lived on earth and nobody's arguing it. 20% of the world no longer lives in village like communities. That began with the industrial revolution. When you look prior to that, 100% of people, I mean, unless you just literally were alone somewhere, which you wouldn't survive long, lived in a village type existence.

That was anywhere, ranged from anywhere from 50 to 150 people. Then there would be a new village that broke off because they would need a school and they would need different resources. So this is how people have lived throughout all of time. Ironically, the research done in our generation is fascinating because it absolutely matches that mentality. About 150 people is our capacity to be able to keep up with and know what's happening in their lives, to know if somebody has cancer or to care about, you know, take a macassarole or something. You know, that's about what we have the capacity to care about. And then if you move on down the circles of people, you've got the capacity for three to five close friends that know your daily in and out life. And then you have a capacity for a little bit more to be in and out of your life on a weekly basis.

So you look at the research and it all supports what has been true of humanity for all of time. And yet we find ourselves, many of us, in places where we live in a neighborhood where we have fences and we don't even know our neighbors. We live in a world where we go and commute to work and our work friends aren't our home friends and our church friends aren't our neighbor friends.

And it's all divided into these silos and we're very isolated. And we kind of wonder what's broken because we haven't known another way. What I wanted to do was really tell the story of another way of this is how humanity has always lived. It has been fruitful and helpful and they've prospered in these villages.

That cannot be my reality. At the same time of working on this project, I moved to a metroplex. I moved to Dallas, Texas. So we had to figure it out there.

But I was thinking about all these things. And one thing that took us to Dallas was we had family there. And so we really started to make choices based on people rather than cool cities or jobs or weather, you know, whatever reasons people tend to move these days. I wanted to choose family. And it was closer to my family and we were in town with his. Now, what did you find when you went to Scripture?

Same thing? Well, the first thing I do on every project is I pull every Scripture out of the Bible on that subject. So we begin with, I mean, mountains of Scriptures usually on a topic. And of course, I mean, I went to seminary. Like, I've got a theological framework before I begin anything on any subject.

But that's where I start. And it was interesting because when we pulled it all, there wasn't as much as I thought. And then I had to step back and think theologically about it and go, wait, no, the whole book is written about people. About families.

Two groups of people. And the whole story. And when I began to theologically see that grid, which is how I wrote the Bible study of just the theological arc of community throughout Scripture, there really is no verse that's written outside of the context of community. It was all written to people groups. In the Old Testament, you see it written to Israel. You see it written to nations.

Nations at that point were, of course, a lot smaller and groups of people. And then you see in the New Testament to the local churches, many of the letters were written to local churches. So when I began to view it like that, there really wasn't any of the Bible that wasn't about it. And so that's why I took a really theological high-level picture. You look at Genesis.

Let's start there. You see a communal God who even uses the plural in those Scriptures of creation. He says, let us create man in our image. He reveals his Trinitarian form in that moment. God, in case anyone doesn't know, I'm using big words, that God is three and God is one, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

So he reveals his Trinitarian form in Genesis as he's creating a man. And then the first thing he says about the man, it is not good for that man to be alone. Now, we always talk about it, I'm sure, on this show, especially in the context of marriage, but he just meant you can't be alone. It's not good. It's not good.

It's never good. And it's not just men. It's men and women. Mankind, we are communal beings. And it says that we were created in his image as he's revealing his Trinitarian form. So you know that he is a communal God in his very presence and essence. He is communal.

So therefore, when he builds a man in his image, he builds him communal. It's not something that we crave. It's not something that we feel sad when we're missing it. It's part of who we are. My friend that's a Christian and a psychiatrist and neuro researcher, he says, we come into the world looking for someone looking for us, and we never stop looking for that. An infant is born looking for someone looking for them. And we all see that in a baby's eyes. You know, you can see it from birth that they're looking for someone looking for them. And I think it's important for people to realize that theologically that we are communal because I think otherwise we'll try to slap a supper club on it or a Bible study and think that's enough. But yet we were really meant to live day in and day out with people.

What does that look like for you? That's David Ann Wilson with Jenny Allen on Family Life Today. We'll hear her response in just a minute. In such a connected world, life can feel isolating, right?

Well, what do you do about it? Well, Jenny Allen was on a mission to search for that same answer and wrote all her insights in a new book called Find Your People. And when you give today at Family Life, we'll send you a copy of Jenny's book as our thanks. Your gift helps others pursue the relationships that matter most.

You can give online at familylifetoday.com or by calling 800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. All right, now back to David Ann's conversation with Jenny Allen and what living in community looks like for her family in a large city like Dallas.

So it's been a change, a shift. So when we moved to Dallas and this was a value and I was thinking about these things, we began by moving somewhere where we could see our family, where we were blocks away, where last week I stopped by my mother-in-law's house to see her, what she had planted that day. You know, we wanted to be somewhere where we could run into our friends and neighbors. And then I began to pray for five friends within five miles.

And I really believed that I was going to build my own little village. And what's cool is we have. Our small group has been together five years. We're very committed to each other.

We're doing life in a very transparent way. We are helping each other raise our kids. All of our kids know each other and are great friends. Was this the perfect small group?

Was this the end-all be-all small group? We didn't know, but they were approximate to us. And we knew we would be raising our kids together. And so I began to make choices where proximity was a value. I began to make choices where the hardest one I had to make was just to be more vulnerable.

And as a leader and someone that's in public eye, it's a hard thing to choose to do. And so I just had to risk. And I had been hurt before. Well, I was going to say, as a woman, I've talked to so many women as you have that say, Oh, I'm not doing that. Like, women are mean. You know, girls are mean. Newsflash, so are guys.

Just throwing that out. But I'm saying that women will start with that. I don't have any friends because women are mean and I've been burnt and so I'm not going to be there. So for you to go back there and say, God, I'm going to pray for five friends within five miles.

Women are probably thinking, I want that, but I've prayed that I haven't found it. And you're walking through with us like how that happened. Well, one thing I did in the book was I held everybody's hand because I have gotten eight million messages about how hard this is for people. What do you mean you held their hand?

I told them exactly what to do. I'm like, this is how you make a friend. I mean, I give them language. And it's funny, some people are just like, these are the hardest projects I've ever had in a book.

And it's because of that vulnerability piece. It's because it's awkward to make friends. And many people have the friends, but they haven't gone deep with the friends.

And that's my vision for the book. It's not just for someone that's lonely. It's for people that have friends and maybe they're not as deep and connected as they wish they were. Or they don't know you. Like, they know you surface stuff. They know about your kids and the schools, but they don't know your fears.

They don't know your vulnerabilities. And that's what you're saying, to find those friends that will go deep with you. Yeah. And all of us have been hurt. I mean, this subject was so difficult to write about because we've all hurt people and we've all been hurt. If you've ever been close to anyone. And so people are the best parts of life and people are the hardest parts of life.

And so in some ways, it's a cute little yellow fun cover. In other ways, you open the book and it's war. It's like, this is a tender thing and we have to fight for it. And it's not easy. Because the enemy, Satan, hates for us to be friends. And so he'll do anything to divide us, too.

Yes. We've got a cultural issue that I've already mentioned. We've got a relational issue.

We've been hurt. And then there, of course, the biggest thing is there's an enemy that hates it. If we were made in God's image to live communally and if we ever experienced that in the form that the Bible calls us to, then yes, he wants to destroy it. And so there was a whole part of the book about just not quitting people when it gets hard because our enemy isn't flesh and blood.

Ephesians says it says that we're battling dark cosmic forces. You know, I mean, we don't talk about that a lot, but that's happening. And so it helped me have perspective that we're at war and the tensions we face in that war are going to want to and try to destroy our relationships. And pull us apart. Exactly. And we're seeing that everywhere. So how did you find your book title, Find Your People?

I know when we moved to Detroit years ago, knew nobody, going there to be the lion's chaplain, and then we ended up starting a church. But I knew then, this is 30 plus years ago, I need guys. Yeah. I got to have guys. Yeah.

So it's sort of funny. I found a couple of groups. I got in one and I thought, okay, these are my guys. There's probably too many guys, you know, but I'm in this group. And I remember one day coming in there, you talk about being vulnerable. And I said, guys, I got to share something.

I struggled with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I just got to say that. Here's the reaction. I can't believe. I go, I mean, they just looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world.

So sad. And I said, none of you guys? I'm not saying you struggled this week. Have any of you ever struggled? Never.

Not one time in my life. That is such a lie. I'm sorry. That's exactly what I thought. That is a lie.

All I know is I walked out of that room thinking, okay, they're probably not being truthful. And here's the other thing I thought, these aren't my people. That's right. And I found them.

Yep. And I've celebrated now them. Was your struggle, I mean, how did you find your people? What a great story. I love that you just shared that because- Great story?

Well, a horrible story. But what a great example of what's actually happening out there, right? I mean, so many people listening are going, listen, I've tried this. And what you didn't do was say, I'm going to stop here.

You just said, nope. Okay, these aren't them. And that's okay. And I think we've got to be selective. And you saw Jesus be very selective about who he spent time with and choosy, I would say. He didn't just let the masses come and all the time. He certainly chose people to have dinner with and spend time with and he preached to the masses.

But who was in his inner circle, he was selective about. And so I would say there's three things that in my life that I feel like have worked well to bring these people into my life to look for. Number one, humility. That means you can resolve conflict because there will be conflict, right?

Number two is availability. You need people that need friends. If you are trying to break into a group that has been together for years, that's probably going to be exhausting. Now, one of those people might be your friend because you really click with them, but don't need to be in that group. Maybe it will work out, but it's okay if your friends are not all in one group. You can have different friends that you spend different time with and they come together for your birthday or whatever and they get to know each other. But it doesn't have to be.

My circles are bigger than those five small group people now, but they all know each other, but they're not all best friends and that's okay. And then so availability. They need to be available. You need to be able to see them for sure more than once a month.

I would say more than once a week you should be able to see them. And I know that blows people's mind. They're like, I don't have time for this and I'd like to address that after this. So availability, humility, and then transparency. If you say something, and the way I tell people to test this is to start by sharing something a little bit vulnerable.

That was a great one because you were testing them. You're like, can I share this here? Share something a little bit vulnerable, not something that you'll walk away completely wounded if they throw shame back your way, but share something a little bit vulnerable and then see how it goes. If you really believe that potential is there, another thing I'll say is use your words. If you've spent significant time with people and you're being vulnerable, say, guys, I need you to listen, or I need you to give me advice, or I need you to nod and read Romans 8, 1 over me.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I need you to share back. You know, one thing we don't do in friendship is we don't use our words. We don't say, we walk away from a friendship before we say, hey, this is what I need in this friendship.

I have a really, it's my best friend. But when we started becoming friends, she moved into our area. Dave and her husband were friends and starting to get to know each other. He was in my group.

Yeah. And we had little kids, babies, and like, it was a struggle. And so we just get together once a month.

And there was a point where we had this define the relationship talk, which I think is what you're talking about. And she said, why do you hardly ever call me? And I said, are you kidding? I have no wife.

I can't even call my mom, let alone my friend. And then I said, what do you want from our relationship? Which I had never asked another woman that question.

She said, well, let me be specific. I want you to call me every day and just say, are you surviving? I'm like, every day?

And so then we start talking about like, well, could we make it three days a week or five days a week? And then we started getting into just like you would with a male female relationship. What would this look like? What could it look like?

It was amazing. And I had never done that with somebody because before I think what I had done is I disappoint them. I feel attention and then I would pull away. Right. And so now I've disappointed her again. I'm not a good friend. But this friend was saying, no, I think you can do that.

Let's do that. Why aren't you saying that? So I'm like you and I have a friend like your friend. And her name's Lindsay. And I talk about her a lot in the book because she is, I call her my intrusive friend. She gets so mad at me because she's like, that sounds negative. And I'm like, it is.

Some days I feel that way. And she'll speak true. I love it. She'll let you know. But she tells me and she has come over regularly. She drops in. She changed the way I view friendship.

Me too. And she's in the book so much because I call her my relationship coach. She is just this passionate zealot for friendship. And she's really good at it.

That's Michelle. And she fights for you. And when I say, oh, I'm fine. She's like, no, you're not. You're lying.

What's wrong? And I never had really had someone fight that hard for me where they didn't give up. What had happened in the past was because I wasn't vulnerable and because it was hard for me because I'd been wounded. I actually, if I look back at myself in my 20s, I actually was super vulnerable. It was being a pastor's wife that kind of took that from me. And so I needed somebody to train it back out of me and to flex that muscle again and to remember how to do that and to remember that I'm safe. Not always, but certainly with this group that has proven safe, she taught me how and she pulled me out. And I think that people are listening right now, they're like, I have no one like that. What I talk about in the book is if you become that, you will have it.

And that's what I've seen be true in my life. If I initiate, when you asked, how do you actually make those people or find those people? It was the most awkward. I move into Dallas.

I certainly know people in the DFW area, but not many people that were blocks or in those five miles. And so I had to start from scratch somewhat. And so I had to make phone calls and I reached out on Facebook to my old college counselor that I knew lived in the neighborhood and said, can we go to coffee? We hadn't seen each other in 20 years.

That's how I got that small group was I took a risky, awkward step, right? It was, I mean, can you imagine she's like this poor, desperate girl? You know, this poor, desperate girl. She's needy.

I'm totally reaching here, but we had the best coffee. And then she said, you know what? We're about to join a small group, which you all want to join. And I said, I don't know if we're ready for that.

And then she stayed on me and a few months later, that was actually the group we joined and we're still together. So I think it does just take looking for any little potential that you could possibly imagine and pursuing it and taking initiative. And I think it's really important what you just said, pursuing it, because I think often we become the victim and we say, you know, I don't really have any friends.

Nobody reached out to me. And we sort of sit and wait and you're saying, no, get out there. If you want to go find it, God will bring you to people. And I would say right now, the reason it's a book and not just a podcast or a pamphlet is because, you know, a lot of people are tired right now, right? So so much of what I did in the book was to create a vision and to say this is actually worth it. And so for what you know is hard, right? It is hard.

I'm not suggesting it's otherwise it's awkward. It takes risk. It takes work.

You could get hurt. All of that is true. I'm just saying there's not really life apart from relationships. There's not. That is life. You will not look back at I'm sure your sister's funeral, if she was a believer, like and saw all the people there, that was the greatest investment of her life in that room, right?

That was it. And so you know that those are what make life worth living. And so you almost have to I mean, I hate to do it because I don't want to be the bad guy.

I like the yellow happy cover. But the reality is, we kind of have to just say, like to take it like vitamins will be like, you know what, maybe I'm not in the mood. Maybe I'd rather watch Netflix in my robe tonight. I'm going to call someone and I'm going to invite someone and I'm going to do this. And as that happens, the stories are already coming in of how that has changed her life. Just that phone call. Just that text. Just that coffee date. Just that having, you know, for one friend, it was she's been sitting at her daughter's gymnastics class for years with the same women and they sit there and scroll their phones. They say hi, and they tell small talk, but they scroll their phones. And she was like, we're sitting here for an hour, you know, a few times a week. And so she turned to one of them and started asking deep questions.

And then the next week, they came over for dinner, and they had a couples game night, and they now have a relationship with someone she'd been sitting beside for years. And so I just say, look at who's already around you, notice, initiate and see what happens. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Jenny Allen on Family Life Today. If you've been listening to Family Life Today, then you know how important it is to be a family on a mission. We believe that God calls us into community and to serve each other with the abundance of resources that He has blessed us with. As Ecclesiastes 4 and 9 says, two are better than one. Right now, there are two ways that you can partner with Family Life to impact lives for His kingdom. The first is if you feel led to start a small group, we want to offer you a discount on all leader materials with the code 250FF. And second, you can partner with us financially to make an impact in families as they grow closer in the relationships that matter most. You can find out more about both of these opportunities at familylifetoday.com. And tomorrow, Dave and Anne Wilson will continue their conversation with Jenny Allen about the importance of setting aside time for friendships outside of your marriage. That's tomorrow. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.