Christian Community: Why Adult Friendships Feel Weird–Jennie Allen

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Christian Community: Why Adult Friendships Feel Weird

Guest:Jennie Allen

From the series:Jennie Allen: On Finding Your People (Day 1 of 3)

Air date:July 8, 2026

Dave (00:04):

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

Ann (00:26):

To watch those friends walk in, 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.

Dave (00:50):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:56):

And I’m Ann Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave (01:10):

We were made for community. We’re going to talk about that today with Jennie Allen. She just came into Orlando, Florida. She’s been on FamilyLife Today, but Jennie, welcome back.

Jennie (01:19):

Thanks for having me, guys.

Dave (01:20):

This is fun.

Dave:

I mean, you grew up in Little Rock.

Jennie (01:23):

Yes.

Dave (01:23):

So you used to go on FamilyLife in your hometown.

Jennie (01:26):

Yeah.

Dave (01:26):

Does it feel any different being in Orlando?

Jennie (01:29):

Yeah. No, this is so fun. I mean, it’s a beautiful campus and I’m such a fan of Cru and so it’s so great to be here with you guys today.

Ann (01:36):

Well, Jennie, it’s fun because for 35 years, I worked with Detroit Lions’ wives. So their wives, their 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.

Jennie (02:19):

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, right?

Ann:

Yeah, exactly.

Jennie:

So great.

Ann (02:31):

Yeah.

Dave (02:32):

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.

Jennie:

Oh, thanks.

Dave:

I mean, I was so impressed with Jennie Allen as an author.

Ann (02:56):

Does that mean you get in your head too?

Dave (02:58):

Well, yeah, everybody does.

Ann:

Everybody does.

Dave:

That book is not written for women. It’s written for everybody.

Jennie (03:03):

Yeah. 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.

Ann (03:25):

And you started the IF conference.

Jennie (03:27):

Yes.

Ann (03:27):

For those of our listeners that don’t know what that is, explain that a little bit.

Jennie (03:31):

This was a dream to bring women together and to hopefully just further discipleship was the goal. It’s so beautiful because it crosses denomination lines. It crosses just I think all different types of lines that exist in culture and women across the world come together and learn about Jesus and read the Word together and hopefully change and grow together.

Ann:

That’s awesome.

Dave (03:54):

Well, let’s talk about Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World. Where did this come from? What’s the vision behind it?

Jennie (04:02):

Well, you know what’s crazy is the timing of this book seems very like I was a brilliant person because who knew we would be coming out of a pandemic? It’s just cool because it was forecasted for this moment prior to the pandemic existing.

Ann (04:15):

God knew.

Jennie (04:16):

But I look back and I was in Uganda, and I was visiting there and doing some work there in storytelling and with a ministry. I was driving past—it was actually a moment first where I was driving past these two women that were beautiful. 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. I was jealous, and I was bothered more than anything. I thought this is really—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.

(05:02):

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, are 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. That was amazing. They’re the hero. So I just saw this twisted, backwards culture of what we’re supporting and what we’re even encouraging our kids to do.

Ann (05:34):

Is that what bothered you when you said I—

Jennie (05:35):

It made me sad, yeah. 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 actually interviewed people from all over the world. I researched the history of civilization, as well as what the Bible has to say about it, and found a lot of troubling things.

Ann (05:56):

Yeah. What was that? When you research our history in America, what was troubling?

Jennie (06:02):

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 taking a casserole or something.

(06:49):

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. 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. We kind of wonder what’s broken, because we haven’t known another way.

(07:31):

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 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, whatever reasons people tend to move these days. I wanted to choose family. It was closer to my family, and we were in town with his.

Dave (08:10):

Now, what’d you find when you went to Scripture?—same thing?

Jennie (08:13):

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 mountains of Scripture, usually on a topic. And of course, I mean, I went to seminary. 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.”

Ann (08:39):

—about families.

Jennie (08:39):

—”to groups of people.”

(08:41):

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 in 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.

(09:23):

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. 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”—

Ann:

It’s not good for man.

Jennie:

—”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.

Ann:

It’s not good.

Jennie:

It’s not good. It’s never good—and it’s not just men, it’s men and women, mankind. We are communal beings. 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.

(10:05):

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. We all see that in a baby’s eyes. 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.

Ann (10:51):

What does that look like for you?

Jennie (10:52):

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. Last week, I stopped by my mother-in-law’s house to see her, what she had planned that day. 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. 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?

(11:30):

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 I would—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.

Ann (11:57):

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. Women are mean. Girls are mean.”

Dave (12:07):

Newsflash: so are guys, just throwing that out.

Ann (12:09):

But I’m saying that women will start with that. “I don’t have any friends because women are mean,” and “I’ve been burned 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 how that happened.

Jennie (12:30):

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.

Ann (12:37):

What do you mean you held their hand?

Jennie (12:39):

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.

Ann (13:03):

Or they don’t know you. They know your surface stuff. They know about your kids and the schools, but they don’t know your fears. They don’t know your vulnerabilities. That’s what you’re saying, to find those friends that will go deep with you.

Jennie (13:16):

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, right? 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.

Ann (13:39):

Because the enemy, Satan—

Jennie (13:41):

That’s right.

Ann (13:42):

—hates—

Dave:

—wants us alone.

Ann:

—for us to be friends. And so he’ll do anything to divide us too.

Jennie (13:46):

Yes. We’ve got a cultural issue, that I’ve already mentioned. We’ve got a relational issue; we’ve been hurt. Then, 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 experience 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. 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.

Dave (14:26):

And pull us apart. Exactly.

Ann (14:32):

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Dave (14:59):

So how did you find the—

Ann (15:01):

Yeah, the five.

Dave (15:01):

—book title: Find Your People. I know when we moved to Detroit years ago, knew nobody—going there to be the Lions’ chaplain, and then we ended up starting a church. But I knew then—this is 30-plus years ago—”I need guys. I got to have guys.” So it’s sort of funny. I found a couple groups. I got in one, and I thought, “Okay, these are my guys.” There’s probably too many guys, but I’m in this group and I remember one day coming in there—you are talking about be 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 mean, they just looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world. And I said, “None of you guys? I’m not saying you struggled this week.

(15:44):

Have any of you ever struggled?” “Never.” “Not one time in my life.”

Jennie (15:47):

That is such a lie. I’m sorry.

Dave (15:49):

That’s exactly what I thought. 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.”

Jennie (15:57):

That’s right.

Dave (15:57):

And I found them and I’ve celebrated now, them. Was your struggle—I mean, how did you find your people?

Jennie (16:04):

What a great story. I love that you just share that because—

Dave:

Great story?

Jennie:

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.

(16:45):

Number one, humility. That means you can resolve conflict, because there will be conflict, right?

Ann:

Yes.

Jennie:

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.

(17:24):

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 then—and I know that blows people’s mind. They’re like, “I don’t have time for this.” 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.

(17:55):

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.” One thing we don’t do in friendship is we don’t use our words. We walk away from a friendship before we say, “Hey, this is what I need in this friendship.”

Ann (18:23):

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.

Dave (18:30):

He was in my group.

Ann (18:31):

Yeah. We both had little kids, babies and it was a struggle. And so we just get together once a month. There was a point, where we had this, “Define the relationship” talk, which I think is what you’re talking about. She said, “Why do you hardly ever call me?” And I said, “Are you kidding? I have no life. 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?

(19:18):

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’d disappoint them. I’d feel a tension, and then I would pull away like, “Oh, 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?”

Jennie (19:37):

So I’m like you, and I have a friend like your friend. Her name’s Lindsey 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.

Ann:

And she’ll speak truth. She’ll let you know.

Jennie:

But she tells me and she has come over regularly. She drops in. She changed the way I view friendship. 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.

Ann (20:05):

That’s Michelle.

Jennie (20:05):

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. I think people are listening right now. They’re like, “I have no one like that.”

(20:42):

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 of my life.

(20:49):

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? I mean, can you imagine? She’s like, “This poor desperate girl. This poor desperate girl.”

Ann:

She’s needy.

Jennie:

“She’s really reaching here.” But we had the best coffee; and then she said, “You know what?

(21:27):

We’re about to join a small group. Would 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. 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.

Dave (21:46):

And I think it’s really important what you just said, “pursuing it,” because I think, often, we become the victim. We say, “I don’t really have any friends.” Nobody is reaching out to me, and we sort of sit and wait. You’re saying, “No, get out there. If you want it, go find it.” God will bring you the people.

Jennie (22:03):

And I would say, right now, the reason it’s a book, and not just a podcast or a pamphlet, is because a lot of people are tired right now, right? 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 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.

(22:45):

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.

(22:52):

But the reality is we kind of have to just say, “Take it like vitamins.” I’ll 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 their life—just that phone call, just that text, just that coffee date, just that having—for one friend, 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 small talk; but they scroll their phones. And she was like, “We’re sitting here for an hour, a few times a week.” And so she turned to one of them and started asking deep questions.

(23:29):

And then the next week they came over for dinner, and they had a couple’s 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.”

Ann (23:49):

Man, I always love having Jennie Allen on. Again, her book is called Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World.

Dave (23:57):

And you can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann (24:01):

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Dave (24:45):

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