Tag Archives: community

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School for Conversion: Monasticism on the rise

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From folks like The Simple Way and the Camden House, a new collaboration of communities calling themselves the new monasticism have begun to spread the word, and now they are doing “conferences.”

From
New Monasticism

Introductory Schools— Existing new monastic communities host three to four day intensive Schools during which participants pray and work with the community, study the biblical and theological foundations of new monastic community, and reflect carefully on the community’s responses to the particular needs of its location and make-up. For a list of upcoming dates and locations, click here.
New Monasticism Retreats— If you are part of a church, Bible study group, community, or ministry organization that would like to host a retreat on new monastic community and Christianity as a way of life.

We live in a culture of specialized education where people incur an incredible amount of debt and invest as many as twenty-five years in education for the sake of professional training. Hardly anyone, however, invests time and resources into learning how to live well. Even less in becoming holy. Yet Christians claim that this is the goal of life: to be holy as God is holy. SFC is a response to the great need for a space where Christians can think carefully about the way of life that Jesus taught and practiced while experimenting in the new reality of God’s kingdom here on earth.

Find more info and everything else at New Monasticism.

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I think I’m back (with air conditioning intact)

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Our lease in this apartment started on the 15th. Unfortunately, all that was supposed to be done to the apartment, stuff we had agreed upon with the landlord that would be done, was not done on the 15th. I think, since he had let us move in earlier into the two bedroom next door, he felt he didn’t have to stay within that time-line. I’m not sure the reasoning, but on the 15th those things where not done. On Friday, the 18th, we rented a carpet cleaner from the grocery store and cleaned the carpets ourselves. We moved in on Saturday.
Just yesterday an air-conditioning unit was finally put in upstairs (where Mindy and I sleep). There are still holes in the walls that need to be patched (a priority mostly for efficiency of air escaping, not so much aesthetics), and the toilet in the bathroom is still leaking, and there are a couple other things. Eventually they are going to put in washer and dryer hook-ups as well.

Mainly though, our air-conditioning upstairs is working, which means it’s not 90+ degrees. This means I can comfortably work at my desk, unpack my stuff, and what you’ve all been waiting for, sit undistracted and type. I think that means I’m back. Hopefully you can tell by the amount of posts this week.

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Reflections on Community, moving, painting and more.

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As I write I’m sitting on my futon mattress fold in half with piles of stuff all around me, in a living room of a new apartment. In the bedroom Dawn, Avery and Roman are sleeping, and Bryan is at the coffee shop working. Our community has begun. It really started two weeks ago when we moved Bryan and Dawn and the kiddos from their apartment into my two bedroom apartment (minus Mindy who is chilling in Minnesota with her family).
Thursday night our community grew. Daniel, Josh and Chris all agreed to join our experiment. What does this whole thing truly mean? I couldn’t tell you. There will be nine people attempting to live together, to be intentional about how we live together and to share, challenge, encourage and grow with one another. We never sat down and wrote out a plan for what we are trying to accomplish, we didn’t have any specific discussions (yet) about goals, rules, visions. What we share is a conviction of living out this faith and trying to follow the ways of Jesus. It’s going to be interesting to see what that looks like.
Let me explain briefly the space that we will be living in (pictures to come soon). We will be renting two units of a tripleplex (like a duplex only bigger). In the larger one Bryan and Dawn and the kids will take two connected rooms. Mindy and I will have a section of the upstairs in that same unit. The living room, kitchen and a portion of the upstairs will be common space for all to use. The second unit is a small two bedroom unit where the three guys will share the available rooms. The living room and kitchen in that area will serve as some other function of the house. The goal will be for these two units to be shared freely and not to be disconnected in anyway.
One of my readers here mentioned that they are very interested in what we are doing and hoped that I would be open and honest about the experience. Let me acknowledge that I will make every effort to be open and honest in what I write. However, I will not use that honesty as an excuse to be in any way negative concerning others. If that means at times you do not get the full picture, then so be it. I will certainly share about the difficult experiences and the tensions that arise, but I will not do so at the expense of any community member. I hope I am clear about my intentions and I hope you find what I write about this experiment enjoyable.
I can’t speak for others, but I will share more soon about why I feel that this communal living is an important and worthwhile endeavor.

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Community begins with small steps

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I’m not quite sure how to begin this series of posts. We, my wife and I, and our friends Bryan and Dawn, are about to embark on a year long journey into community. This isn’t your traditional churchy idea of community, this is your raw, live with, share with, laugh with, cry with, hold each other accountable and challenge one another type of community.
What this is going to end up looking like as we take the journey I’m really not sure. The exciting thing for all of us is that we really believe this is a place we are supposed to be. I would venture to say this is the type of living more people should be considering.
We are going to do our best to document this journey, complete with weekly audio updates, a compilition of writings by the four of us (and sometimes the three year old), and plenty of photographs. Who knows maybe we’ll get a book deal or movie contract out of the deal. Seriously though, I’m excited about documenting this because I feel it is a journey many more people can and should take and our ability to trace our journey will give others the interest and courage to embark on it on their own.

I also promise not to glamorize in anyway our experience. There are some harsh realities and difficulties we will face, there is plenty of truth to that. Already we face the tensions and frustrations of giving up our own expectations for the well being of the community. This will not be a reality show, what it will be is the journey of four folks, trying to live out their convictions, and the trials and tribulations they face in that endevor.

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Sorry I’ve been neglecting you…

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I feel bad about not posting more on here. For one there are a million things running through my head, which is usually a good reason for me to post umpteen times. And with my limit on internet time (only 30 minutes a day), you’d think I’d have more time to write off-line and then post things for you. Sorry, that’s not happening.

I guess my mind is just in a whirlwind waiting to settle down with this community and housing thing. I’ll let you know the outcome when I know but I got to stop any play by play which might mean very little posting in the next couple days.

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Red Bike, Blue Bike, community bikes, sharing bikes.

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In 1999 and for sometime before and after that there was and I believe still is a successful community bike sharing program in my hometown of Madison, WI. It was called the Red Bikes Project and consisted of a bunch of bikes painted entirely red placed for people to use through out the downtown.

I love the community bike program, and I think it would be such a wonderful thing to do here in Nashville, especially with the possiblity of folks using them year-round.

I’ve just heard from a couple of Bike Co-ops in the area, and I’m beginning to think this could become a real possibility out here.

(More bike projects)

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Threads: Relevance

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RELEVANCE: 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

-adaptation
-incarnational living as opposed to attractional
-understanding
-relevant to Jesus
-method changes, message remains without compromise
-communicating in the language of the culture
-others focused

Paul’s famous line: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

The idea of being relevant to culture and people is a wonderful idea. In some circles this is called, “contextualization,” the idea that we are taking the gospel and putting it into a context that the receiver will understand. I wrote an essay to get my major approved in college on that very topic.
To often though I think we use this idea of being “Relevant” as justification for fulfilling our own desires. We justify as being “Relevant” our country club membership, boat, drinking, smoking, watching certain movies, going out to eat, and many more things. I think we need to be more skeptical of “relevance” when i is beneficial or pleasurable for ourselves.

Contextualizing is considering that regardless of how direct a translation “washed white as snow” is, it is going to make no sense to someone who has never seen or heard of snow.
Relevance and Contextualization also seeks to recognize that talking to someone about your views on abortion or homosexuality is going to take something other then a “love the sinner, hate the sin,” approach. A person who never had a loving father in their life has no direct context with which to understand God as a “loving father.”

I really like the line above that says: “incarnational living as opposed to attractional,” because that acknowledges that we need to be careful not to cloak our self-gratification in a false effort to be “relevant.”

I love the idea of relevance because it really gets to the nitty gritty. It’s practical, it’s specific, it’s something we can sit and talk about and really take some action on. And I really think we need to spend more time in the church doing that. It seems we spend most of our time talking about abstract, philsophically or touchy-feely things, and then we walk out the door with no real challenge on our lives what so ever. Let’s get dirty and talk about how we can be more relevant to our culture.

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What a church should look like…

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A while ago I asked a number of people for topics to write about. One of them asked me what I thought “the church should look like…” I have been procrastinating on posting about this for a long time. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion and ideas. I think, rather, it’s that I’m not quite sure how to begin articulating those ideas.
I’ve been thinking recently that it would be neat for me to try (this is Zach’s idea) to write a fiction story about a church that embodies the values and lifestyle’s that I think are so central to the teachings of Christ.
Needless to say I’m still not quite sure how I should go about this. But I guess I just need to start.

My first thought about what any given church should look like is that it should be representative of the community it is in. Far too many people commute to their church and thus the church, the community, and the homes of the members are all complete spread out and seperate entities.

If you want to know what I think your church should look like then go to this link. Type in the address of your church and look at the statistics that come up for the surrounding community.

When you look at the statistics you see, do you feel they are accurately represented in your church body? Why or why not?

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Dorothy Day Quotes: A Servant of God

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Dorothy Day, declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church, is well known for her Social Justice work and helping start the Catholic Worker Movement. She is truely a great leader both of her day and for us now. I couldn’t find a good collection of her powerful words so I thought I’d leave you with some here. I’ll write more of my thoughts later.

Dorothy Day

Quotes from Dorothy Day:

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

The work is more important than the talking and the writing about the work.

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions

Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at at time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action in the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?

Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up.

(The following are from a compilation by Robert Ellsberg as published in Geez Magazine)

Love of Brother means…non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others.

Poverty means having a bare minimum in the way of clothes and seeing to it that these are made under decent working conditions, proper wages and hours, etc. The union label tries to guarantee this.

Poverty means not riding on rubber while horrible working conditions prevail in the rubber industry. Poverty means not riding on rails while bad conditions exist in the coal mines and steel mills. Poverty means not accepting that courteous bribe from railroads, the clergy rate.

Of course, we are not all given the grace to do such things. But it is good to call to mind the vision. It is true, indeed, that until we begin to develop a few apostles along these lines, we will have no mass conversions, no social justice, no peace. We need saints. God, give us saints!

How far we all are from it! We do not even see our infirmities. Common sense tells us, “Why live in a slum? It is actually cheaper to live in a model housing project, have heat and hot water, a mauve or pink bath and toilet, etc. We can manage better; we have more time to pray to meditate, study….Yes, we will have more time with modern conveniences, but we will not have more love.

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Have you ever thought about community?

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My good friend Dave Jones wrote an email in an effort to start gathering folks interested in conversation about community:

I’m including you in this email because you and I have had a conversation that went something like,

“Wouldn’t it be cool to live in some sort of radical community that is holistically Christ-focused?”

“Like a commune?”

“Maybe, something like that.”

“Yeah, that’d be awesome! . . . I think”

We are trying to create an ongoing conversation about community. Dave’s an amazing organizer and leader when it comes to things like this, I’m just a jump on the bandwagon sort of guy. Post a comment if you want to join in, or email me and I’ll forward you the email.