We’ve delayed launch! One of the reasons the Denver Gap Year staff decided to delay launch until 2020 is to allow time for all of us to continue bonding as a staff and to form our home and community in Denver. This was a huge decision for us as we all believe in the necessity of belonging found in home and community.
People need home and community.
Our home is that place of rest, comfort, love, familiarity and belonging. It can be in a house, a city, coffee shop, anywhere that has a sense of “this is the place where I belong”.
And we need our community, the people we call family, whether blood relatives or otherwise. These are the people who love us. If home is where we belong, then community is who we uncover our belonging with.
As humans, we crave home and community because we crave that sense of belonging, it’s a necessity for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Without belonging, we easily fall into a sense of loneliness, purposelessness, and a lack of security.
Before moving to Denver, I lived in multiple Godly communities over the course of 2 years. In those communities, I matured as an individual and as a friend of Christ. But even within those communities, I never found somewhere to settle down. I never found a place to call my home.
After 6 months, Denver is slowly becoming home to me. The more I explore Denver and the more I do everyday normal life things here, the more it becomes a place my heart has settled in. And with this new home comes a new community that continues to grow and mature. The more I settle my heart and self in Denver, the more I understand that life with home and community is a life that is full.
The DGY staff will be welcoming participants into our new home, Denver, and into our new community. This community is composed of people that are loving, curious, fun, intentional, and are on fire for Jesus. It is a community that wants to know you and accept you for who you are, while at the same time calling you forth into becoming like Christ.
Today’s American society is lacking belonging because there is a lack of home and community. So many of us come from homes that lack love. Loneliness is at an all time high. Escapism is being celebrated. Depression and anxiety are running rampant. America’s chronic lack of belonging has dire consequences and Jesus has called His followers to do something about it.
Jesus has called us to love because when we love our neighbors, we create a loving home and a community of people who look and smell like Christ. As we love, we reveal everyone’s inherit belonging.
The staff’s desire is to love each participant with the love of Christ and to teach them how to do the same to others. I believe we will fully introduce participants to the growth, love, joy, peace, and belonging that comes with home and community.
I pray we all find our home and community. I pray Jesus continues to show us how and why we belong with Him and with each other. I declare strongholds of loneliness, depression, and escapism to fall at His feet.
A life full of belonging is a life worth living. You are invited to live it with us.