This year has been a difficult year for me. It has been a season of transition and growth – personally and professionally. It has been particularly hard because it has also been a season of loneliness. I do not remember feeling so alone in any season of life before.

I am on the other end of that loneliness now. I processed through this season with my friend, Scott. At the end of a very fruitful, insightful, and enjoyable conversation, he said to me, “It’s good to have this time again. I’ve missed this.” Puzzled by his statement, I asked what he meant. He then said something very revealing to me.

“Kelvin, over the past two-years students became your life. You mentored them. However, you also hung out with them all the time. Every time I saw you, called you, or looked for you, you were with students. For two years, they were your community. There is something unbalanced about that.”

He continued to share how he has intentionally placed boundaries in his life to guard against students becoming his community in an unhealthy way. Finally, it all came together. I understood why it was such a hard year for me. My community either had graduated in May, or was graduating in December. I lost sight of the boundaries in the relationship and looked to students to give me what I needed from a community of peers and colleagues who were my contemporaries.

There is such a fine line between helping students understand their need for community and allowing students to become our community. The former models a biblical truth that we are not designed to navigate this life alone. The latter, however, can create an emotional dependency upon a group that, in their design, is not able nor mature enough to meet. I had an emotional and communal lack because I was depending upon the group I mentored to also build into me.

Nothing inappropriate took place. On the surface, everything was in order. However, through my conversation with Scott, I came to understand something very important. My job is to model, promote, and encourage the building of community among students. In doing so, I cannot make the students my community. I must be intentional about building community elsewhere.

I have since come up with a series of questions I ask myself to guard against the blurring of this line:

1. Do I intentionally block off time in my schedule where I am unavailable to students? It does not mean that time is filled with meetings, preparation for teaching, office work, etc. It simply means I am taking a break from interaction with students.
2. Can I get through a vacation time without making myself available to students who want to call or hang out?
3. How intentional have I been about reaching out peers and colleagues who are my contemporaries? Is there space in my life to hang out with them?
4. When I share my personal experiences with students, am I giving too much information? There is a fine line between sharing my story as an example and talking about what I am currently facing to get feedback and advice.
5. Does my time with my own children suffer because of my involvement with students? My daughters opened my eyes to this. They strongly disliked a couple of students I worked with. Finally, after my talk with Scott, I asked them why. They responded, “Because they were here all the time, or you were with them all the time. It was like they became your life.” It sounded familiar…and the truth stung.
6. Can I freely turn my phone off without worrying about students who might try to reach me? If their emergency is that important, they will find someone else. They are very resourceful.

Scott’s tough, but loving words reminded me that I need community. God designed me for community. However, the students I minister to cannot be that community for me. Neither should they be that community.

[ BACK-TO-SCHOOL BLOGATHON HOMEPAGE ]

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Kelvin Walker and his wife have 6 children, the oldest of which recently got married. They live on the campus of Nyack College. You can reach Kelvin at kelvin.walker@nyack.edu, on twitter (@kdog66), or on Facebook (Kelvin L. Walker).