Photograph by Joel Muniz via Unsplash

Religious texts are full of stories about personal redemption. What it means. What it looks like. What our status as “redeemed” ought to lead us to do with our time in the world.

For so many people, faith is a deeply personal endeavor. It’s about one’s relationship with God. But if we are not careful, if we are not attuned to others, another form of redemption can be overlooked, ignored, swept aside — the pursuit of communal redemption.

Today, we are in desperate need of communal redemption.

When I started working in Clark County, Kentucky in 2015, the faith community was a major source of division, arguing over doctrine and competing to put people in seats on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. But one local pastor was particularly concerned by how the community’s youth felt abandoned. He was propelled into action when the local YMCA closed and 400 kids had no place to play basketball. He joined with five other pastors who had become involved in our work there and started Upward Sports. They each had a gym at their church, and figured they could collectively pool their resources to fill the void left by the Y’s closure. In the first year alone, over 800 youth signed up.

Before long, the new initiative was so successful that these churches ran out of space. So other pastors stepped forward. One raised his hand to say his church had a gym, but it needed thousands of dollars in repairs. His congregation raised much of it — a remarkable feat on its own — but there was still a significant shortfall. Yet another pastor raised his hand and said he would pass the plate among his congregation. Believe it or not, his small church raised another $12,000 to help repair the gym. The effort continued to grow to well over 1,000 youth as more and more churches signed up. The number of youth and involved churches is still growing.

On the surface, it was just a basketball league. But at its core, this initiative was enabling the community to begin to redeem itself. Through the league, youth, coaches, and residents crossed racial, economic, and faith divides that had stymied the community for decades. This action helped to reinforce other local actions, some addressing a long-term opioid and meth crisis, others involving the redevelopment of an abandoned downtown, and still others reckoning with the community’s history with slavery and ongoing racial inequities.

I raise this notion of communal redemption because so much of our personal flourishing — a sense of connection and belonging, feeling seen and heard, having genuine opportunity in life — is a function of our shared project called community. We need each other to pursue a more just, inclusive, and hopeful society.

And yet, look around. So many of us are hurting. Isolated. Filled with despair. Feeling left out and left behind. Such conditions are not unique to any segment of society or geography or income. We are each susceptible. Clark County in 2015 certainly wasn’t immune, nor are they immune today. Yet their actions over time have contributed to a redemptive arc for the community. In turn, they have created a new trajectory of hope.

Notice how this type of redemption requires engaging in a shared act. As Clark County’s story illustrates, no one individual, group, or denomination can do this alone. Moreover, they were willing to see and hear one another. And they were unwilling to write off those they might disagree with or whose doctrine looks different. What I am calling for — and what they accomplished in Clark County — is for us to transcend our individual concerns to embrace our shared aspirations.

Personal redemption will always be essential. But there is more we must do. A communal redemption is beckoning us. Our communities and this nation are crying out for it. It’s time we seized this opportunity.