(Continuing a series based on Dunbar’s book, “Friends”. You can find the basic thesis here: https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/09/18/introduction-to-friends-by-robin-dunbar/ )
Dunbar notes that here is a strong finding that friendship with non-family members falls away sharply when people move to live more than 30 minutes away. What distance this is depends on what form of transport you are using. If you are primarily a car based society, then 30 minutes drive is the relevant figure. If cycling, the distance is smaller, if walking that comes down to less than 2 miles. But the point is that where the total transport cost (there and back again) is less than an hour, we will generally keep in touch and where it costs more than an hour we’ll tend to lose contact (with exceptions for close friends).
This has implications for church community. If you want to be one close church community then your radius for drawing people in is a 15 minute drive. If you draw people from 30 minutes away, they could live an hour away from someone they meet at church. In that case, they probably won’t meet up in the week, but only at official church events.
Large churches tend to draw from further afield. There are two ways they can cope with this 30 minute rule of thumb. 1) They can set up localised small groups, so that people travelling 30-40 minutes to church from the west form a mid week small group who all live within 15 minutes of each other, and likewise those travelling from north, east and south. People find their close community in these smaller groups. 2) They can decide that friendship beyond church activities is not the goal, and that the friendship formed in church activities is sufficient for discipleship and mission.
Since starting Emmanuel Church Northstowe, the benefits for a church of people living close to each other has been very evident. So I’m a fan of local church where that is possible.
Jots and Scribbles 