A little story about community from the Sojo blog

hi friends,

so we're meeting up on sunday night to talk about what's up and what's next. i've been thinking about it a lot and thinking about my own feelings and hopes and disappointments.

and yeah, i do keep going back to henri nouwen (see previous post, and talk to torrey about how much i drag nouwen into conversations about community) and yeah i do sort of feel like i've just moved on to 'life as usual' but i just happen to be in rogers park with a bunch of friends nearby....

anyway, i was reading the sojourners blog today and there was this story in it by Bart Campolo. i've pasted it below, and also taken the liberty of highlighting some specific parts that leapt out to me with happy memories of what i thought we were all 'signing up for' when we got started last year......:

Friday, May 09, 2008
Small-Time Ministry, Big-Time Dreams (by Bart Campolo)
There are plenty of times I miss running a legitimate ministry organization like Mission Year. Like when I'm breaking down my "office" every night so my family can eat at the kitchen table, or hand-addressing the envelopes for our donation receipts. (Don't get me wrong; I love having to send out those receipts). Or when I'm desperately bribing Roman and his buddy with combo meals at Wendy's to help me move yet another apartment-load of stuff for yet another family in crisis, instead of simply assigning the job to some interns. Trust me, being small-time is hard on the ego.

But then there are those magical moments when being small-time means you get to make things up as you go along.

A few months ago I found myself sitting in the sparsely-furnished, HUD-subsidized apartment of our beloved Bobbie Williams, trying to figure out how such a tough and strong-minded woman got into such dire straights. I won't trouble you with the details, but suffice it to say that in her nearly 50 years, Bobbie has seen more than her share of bad breaks and worse men. Indeed, she feels quite certain she's better off hungry and alone in this little place than cared for and abused in half a dozen others. Still, she knows she could do better.

On that day I visited her, while Bobbie was wearily describing her latest attempt to land a minimum-wage job at a restaurant downtown, I noticed a brochure lying on her coffee table, advertising one of those big-rig truck driving schools. "Where did you get that?" I asked casually, hoping she wasn't back to entertaining men.

"Oh that," she said, her voice brightening as a big smile crossed her face. "That's my dream, which I've been dreaming from the time I was a child. All the other girls wanted to be singers or actresses, but all I've ever wanted is to be a long-haul trucker."

I laughed at first, and Bobbie laughed too, but before long we were deep in conversation about the hard life of a trucker, and about her father forbidding her to pursue it after high school, and about what kinds of resources it would take for her to pursue it now. She told me all about it, the way a lifelong sports fan tells you all about their team, but I didn't mind. In this kind of ministry, genuine dreams are few and far between.

Over the next few days, I kept thinking about Bobbie Williams and her dream of earning a secure living by driving a big rig all over the country. The more I thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.

Bobbie couldn't even pay her rent most months, let alone save $4,000 for tuition. When she wasn't taking care of her grandson, she was out hustling food for herself. She didn't even have a driver's license, for crying out loud.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you? You know Bobbie's in trucking school right now, almost ready to test for her CDL, and you know who loaned her the money (or gave it, if it turns out she can't pass the test). A ghetto grandmother with a GED and a sketchy past might not be a good enough risk for a legitimate ministry organization, and trucking school might be too expensive to build into an ongoing employment program. But none of that matters because we're just the small-time Walnut Hills Fellowship, and Bobbie's been with us since the beginning, and this feels like as good a time as any to take what any lifelong sports fan would recognize as a Hail Mary shot at giving a dear sister a much better life.

If you haven't yet stopped to ask whether or not Bobbie is a certified Christian, or to calculate the chances of us actually getting paid back even if she gets the job, then I think you're connected to the right little faith community. If what you're wondering about instead is how she felt about finally getting behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler ("Incredible!"), or whether everyone else in our fellowship is excited about her opportunity ("Hey, did you hear Bobbie got three out of four on her straight-line backing test?"), or if we're all feeling the pressure as the test day draws closer (Absolutely), well, maybe you should start thinking about moving to Walnut Hills yourself.

We don't have a real office yet. We're always having to move stuff. But we get to make things up as we go along, and take chances on people that nobody else would take chances on, and hold our breath together. And we get to do all that with the almost giddy confidence that all the love in the world is on our side.

Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks, writes, and blogs (www.bartcampolo.com) about grace, faith, loving relationships, and social justice. Bart is the leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship (www.thewalnuthillsfellowship.org) in inner-city Cincinnati. He is also founder of Mission Year (www.missionyear.org), which recruits committed young adults to live and work among the poor in inner-city neighborhoods across the U.S., and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world.

a reminder about community

i miss y'all and i wanted to post the section of the henri nouwen "reaching out" book that i quoted from at our last dinner together at the end of january. be reminded, be encouraged, be challenged....

"...it is important to remember that the Christian community is a waiting community, that is, a community which not only creates a sense of belonging but also a sense of estrangement. In the Christian community we say to each other, 'We are together, but we cannot fulfill each other... we help each other, but we also have to remind each other that our destiny is beyond our togetherness.' The support of the Christian community is a support of common expectation. That requires a constant criticism of anyone who makes the community into a safe shelter or a cozy clique, and a constant encouragement to look forward to what is to come.....

Our eyes should not remain fixed on each other, but be directed forward to what is dawning on the horizon of our existence. We discover each other by following the same vocation and supporting each other in the same search. Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention."

friends, let's regroup around this. it has to be this.

i might post some musings about hearing jim wallis talk last night too. very very good stuff.

love to you!
jkw

crumbs from our table

one of the things that always scratches at my heart after our sunday night dinner is the incredible abundance of left over food. whether we are a group of 9 or a group of 29, we always always have more food than we can eat. we wrap it up, we divide among ourselves, and probably a lot of the left overs are eaten (although i can confess that i have ended up throwing out more than i would like to admit).

but i just keep thinking about how we are insulated and warm with piles of food and there are hungry people right outside the window. hungry for food, hungry for the love of Christ, hungry for connection and friendship and someone to care about them.

in all the things we have been talking about lately, this tension between our inward and outward vision has been the most salient to me.

a couple of weeks ago, i mentioned to some of you that our food and love abundance reminds me of the story of the isrealites and the manna. when the gift of food rained down, they gathered it up - even more than what they needed to feed themselves and their families for the day. and it rotted. rotted and stank and drew flies and disgusted everyone. we can't let the incredible blessings of our gifts, our love for each other, our resources, and the training ground/spring board of our group rot. not only will we end up turning our noses at it, but so will our neighbors.

all that to say, i do think that it's valuable that we can continue meeting together, encouraging one another, praying together, giving thanks, praising the LORD, remembering his blessings, and strengthening one another to go out and be the salt and the light. but i also feel really really strongly that if we keep it all for ourselves it will start to stink.

still pondering what this could mean for us, but wanted to put it out there. let's keep talking about this, ok? it's important.

here's a link to a recent sermon posted on the sojourner's page about the rich guy and the beggar lazarus - it's kind of along the same ideas....

http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2007/10/why-rich-people-will-or-wont-g.html#full

bartering skills

so the idea of "bartering" our skills has come up several times recently and i think it is a neat idea.

• barter: barter is a form of trade where goods or services are exchanged for a certain amount of other goods or services, i.e. there is no money involved in the transaction. It can be bilateral or multilateral as trade. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter)

now for those of you out there that are thinking: "having to give and get something equal in return doesn't necessarily fit with the jesus paradigm"... i know, i know. however, let's just say that we really have a lot of skills to offer one another whether given something in return on not.

my hope here is to start a thread of people listing what they can offer!

what do you do that can help others in this community save resources, time, etc?

i can:
-cut hair
-design stationary, invitations, business cards, announcements
-be a workout buddy (running, biking, swimming, tennis, lifting weights)
-teach soccer
-plan menus/make dinner
-share my car

hope

This is a phrase that I pieced together from various things I heard this last weekend away. As it seems to coincide with our conversation last night, I thought I'd share it. It is my prayer for our community...

that we would be a group of people
living a common life
characterized by grace and love.

I realize that may not sound profound, and yet I think the actualization of such a group in its truest, realist sense, would have a profound effect. It would have to point to Jesus.

American Heritage Dictionary defines "characterize" as "To be a distinctive trait or mark of; distinguish."

Imagine a group of people distinctively marked by grace and love! I'm choosing to believe that the Lord could (will?) do this among us.

Thoughts?

Qualities of a Disciple

In the conversation of being like Jesus, Kelly (some of you met her she was here with us a couple of weeks ago) had told us she would send us a copy of "Qualities of a Disciple" (the qualities her community has chosen to live by) to share with us. So here they are:

- A person who puts Jesus Christ before others, self and possessions

Luke 14:26-27, 33

- A person of love

John 13:34-35

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

- A person of prayer

Luke 11:9-13

Matthew 6:9-15

- A person of the Word/who takes Scriptures seriously

John 8:31-32

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Hebrews 4:12-13

- A person who bears fruit

John 15:7-8

Galations 5:19-23

- A person of the Great Commission

Matthew 28:16-20

2 TImothy 2:2

- A person of unity

John 17:20-23

- A person led and empowered by the Holy Spirit

Acts 1:8

1 Corinthians 2:9-10, 16

As I ponder this list, I just imagine what it would be like to live like this; and not just me a group of friends living this way could change the world. If we could be constantly in touch with one another over becoming more like this . . . how would our lives change and how would the lives of those around us be changed. I would love to hear some thoughts of all of ours around what challenges us from this list, what we desire, what we hear the Lord nudging us on.

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Getting Started . . .

Many of us have been gathering in some way, shape of form for the last five months, and many smaller groups of us way before that. Over the course of the last couple Sundays it has become apparent that we need to be continuing to deepen our understanding of "what" this is and "what" comes next.

We are beginning to extend the conversation of living like Jesus together into our weekly lives together. There will be bumps and bruises along the way to figuring out how to best extend the conversations from the gathering table on Sundays into our hearts and minds throughout the rest of our week, and into our whole lives, but it our hope if living as Jesus.

Over the course of these last months, we have talked about . . .

• Trusting others with our hearts and lives
• Living more intentionally with each other -- physically, emotionally and spiritually
• There is a burning desire within individuals to be true disciples of Christ
• There is a sense of wanting to live and shine among those that don't know Him
  
• Fear and it's ability to stunt our growth and progress
• What is a disciple
• What is community
  

. . . among other things.

From these topics there has arisen a lot of great discussions, but as we discussed a couple of Sunday nights ago it has been very easy to keep these discussions in the theoretical. As it came to light, this may be because we have no parameters around which to understand our commitment to one another. Nick Shea made a comment that summed things up a little about "okay, so now is when we actually start to live as a community" . . . This is a scary thing for most of us, yet you would not be here if it were not for a yearning of this kind that has been planted in your heart.

Sunday night, thanks largely to Kelly, we were able to talk about defining some of the elemental things we are committing to live by. It is by knowing what we are committing to that we can begin to see the fruit of living those elements out together, and yet uniquely in our giftedness and calling. We start from the commonality of intention -- being disciples of Jesus (or whatever else you prefer to call it) and we extend it even further to specifics around what does that really look like played out. To think that we could even come close to purposing something that is exactly as God intended is a little lofty, so I would hope that we might just be able to agree on a baseline of things . . . some of us will want to tend towards the simple and the few, and others of us will want it to encompass all the specifics and make sure 'the list' is complete. I hope that we will use some of our personal time with Jesus, and time one on one with each other to flush out the depth to which the things we choose are core beliefs and expression of a disciple of Christ. I believe we all have to come to a compromise on this to some level . . . we have to decide that it's worth getting out of the boat and onto the water with Jesus. We have to continue the journey, allowing (and trusting) God to make course corrections along the way.

What I am asking is that we would focus on the task at hand and that is "just doing it". Beginning to ask questions of each other, and allow others to ask questions of us that align us closer to being a disciple of Christ -- and most of all doing it together.