What will life in the church look like for us?
In light of much of our discussions of late, I feel as if we have all come to a point where we simply want to begin to do those things which God has laid on our hearts, namely to live and learn how to be the church, to be disciples of Jesus, to follow him whole-heartedly, to live in the kingdom and to hope always for its coming. But how best can we foster such a desire? What sort of steps can we take to begin to take part in such a life?
I know that Ike, Joe and myself are preparing for what this might look like, and so I thought it would be useful for us to all begin to share these ideas together to begin to have some form laid out which we can work with and adapt as and when situations change. These are just some rambled thoughts of mine, but I would rather dream together than just share mine.
What we have been envisioning is life together. I hope that sometime next by next summer/fall (2011) we can have a house into which we can move for this to start in a concrete way. Hopefully, by God’s provision and hard work we can pay for a house in full.
This house will be space in which we can learn small things such as patience, forgiveness, servanthood, and love for one another as we live day in and day out together. I do not want to make this sound more romantic than it is. We all know that living with people is a challenge in and of itself, however, we also know that simply acknowledging that we are brothers and sisters in Christ once or twice a week during church meetings falls short of the community which we are a part of.
In this house, I would suggest we follow a sort of ‘Bonhoeffer-ian’ style household liturgy. What I mean by that is that it would be important for us to have our desires transformed by things such as prayer, communion, singing, and scripture reading. This is of course very adaptable, but I think it would be significant in us being grounded in the reality of the kingdom rather than in the pseudoreality of the American dream.
I would hope that in this community we could also learn how to live in God’s economy. This will call for a abandoning of the corrosive effects of capitalism and it’s definitions of value. The money that we may earn from various jobs is not the end all be all of value. What is valuable to us are those things, actions, materials, which move us in a way which is directed to the kingdom. This will call for us to be aware of what money is and what it’s hold on our souls means for us who are God’s. Things like where we spend money and how we spend money, how we earn money and what value our work has beyond money will need to be worked through carefully and with a vision of the kingdom come. It will also call for us to be creative and inventive in how we go about day to day things such as eating, drinking, washing, etc.
On this topic, I also like the idea of establishing significant links between the urban (our house), suburban (Mom and Dad and others from Christ Church) and rural lifestyles (Andy and Israel?). Rather than isolating ourselves into any one of these realms we hope to foster a holistic community that is associated with the church in each of these contexts. I envision the passage of produce from rural churches to suburban churches to urban, and vice a versa. I think there could be significant lessons learned as we begin to take not of the faces and people that produce things for us to use towards the common good. Imagine a piece of furniture that our friends have made at there rural sawmill, would it not represent something about the abundance of God’s gift economy as it sits in the living room of an urban communities house? Or, imagine a group of young urban teenagers taking a weekend trip to a farm to work in the fields, to build things, make things, be productive, to have big bonfires, to breathe fresh air? Would this not be transformative for these young people who have grown up in harsh urban environments, where food is conceived of as always packaged, where things are only valuable because of a price tag? In the same way, would it not be beneficial for rural citizens to be connected to the cities, to the people they provide for? Would it not be good for young people who grow up on the farm to see what God is doing in the cities of this country? For those who live in the suburbs, perhaps this could be an avenue by which they can begin to re-imagine the space that they have been given. Perhaps they can begin to foster an ‘urban’ like sense of culture and community in the suburbs, while at the same time learning from the rural how to produce sustainably, how to conceive of nature? Think of this connection as an extended family who we visit with, welcome to our homes, pray for, stand with and commit to.
This house will be a place where God can demonstrate the presence of the kingdom and the love of God. We will always be intentional about our neighbours, about how we can give to them, about how we can serve them. This will be shaped in a large part on what community we end up moving into, but what is it that we imagine happening in the neighbourhoods we move to?
Another thing that I feel called to do is to help re-build bridges between local churches. We can never be separated from the church, but will we be a local church? Will our community be a local church? We won’t have a building, an office, a worship team, deacons, etc. But we will worship God together, we will meet together, we will build each other up. I suppose that this needs a definition of what a local church is, a discussion that does probably need some time to develop. But either way, we will be about the church through and through and will seek to connect those churches in our locality especially through parties, gathering, events and simply inviting people to live life together with us and each other. Maybe local church pastors will cross paths at a Saturday brunch with no agenda, no alternative purpose for gathering, other than being together and enjoying God’s gift of food and fellowship. Who knows, but if we are intentional about things like this, walls will be broken down and unity will begin to be forged again in the church.
Anyway, just keep these things in mind, lets add to and develop these things. Ike and John feel free to edit the post if you want, it might keep it more coherent rather than just a string of comments…. either way.
