The Hidden Cost of Independence: Rediscovering Biblical Community
By Jeff Galley
True growth happens through interdependence and biblical community–this was the lesson I needed to learn.
I was one month into a new role at Life.Church when my boss, Kevin, exposed a growth challenge that’s been with me all my adult life. After presenting a proposed ministry direction to our leadership team, everyone filed out except Kevin.
He held up a tiny yellow sticky pad covered in tally marks. “Do you know what I was counting?” he asked.
I had no idea.
“These are the times you said ‘I’ or ‘me’ when you should have said ‘we’ or ‘us.’ If you think you can accomplish what you envision with your effort alone, it’ll never happen. This vision will only happen if we all go together.”
Kevin exposed something deeper than word choice: My overgrown sense of independence made me feel I had to be the one with all the answers and the one to make it all happen.
That was well over a decade ago, and what I’ve now grown to understand is that I’ve had a tendency to confuse independence with maturity. When we confuse independence with maturity, we’re essentially saying that the more capable we become (or want to be perceived), the less we need from others.
But this is a false assumption that’s costing us far more than we realize.
We Love Our Independence.
Independence is a cultural touchstone throughout the West, but Americans take it to extremes. Pew Research found that between 2017 and 2021, mentions of “freedom and independence” as a source of meaning in life nearly doubled. We celebrate revolutionaries and pioneers—those who broke the mold. We debate the greatest individual athletes far more than the greatest teams.
Even our introductions reflect this. Americans lead with accomplishments: profession, location, achievements. In many Eastern cultures, people introduce themselves through relationships: “I’m the father of Riku” or “I’m the son of Ravi.”
The church absorbed this narrative. Research from the Barna Group shows 56% of U.S. Christians believe their spiritual life is entirely private. Another 37% prefer to pursue discipleship independently, with only 25% opting for a group journey.
But what if we’ve gotten the equation backward?
