me, me, me, me, me, me, you?

i’m convinced that the heart of intentional community and even just following Jesus is INTENTIONALITY – that’s why it was word of the year for me three years ago and i haven’t really found a replacement word since then, it just really is the key…

which is why i prefer calling myself a CHRIST FOLLOWER rather than a Christian if i need any title at all, because it constantly reminds me of the followING part of it – it’s a doing word – i can not be a follower of Jesus and not be living it out in my day to day

yesterday we took an hour long drive and went for a picnic with two or three families from our neighborhood – it was intentional community at its most simple perhaps because it was simply doing something alongside some other people who we live near – it wasn’t us taking a bunch of neighbors on a picnic which is key [and maybe at some point it needed to be us taking neighbors, i’m not sure, but yesterday certainly not, if anything they took us] and it didn’t need to be the whole block or neighborhood which i think was another key [and at other times maybe we will do things where everyone is invited and we look for bigger buy in] – this was just a bunch of people who live near each other and are in relationship with each other heading out for a picnic…

and i think a sadly huge amount of christians just don’t get it – their religion is me, me, me, me, me, me and then every now and then the possibility of you with a question mark – throw a little into the offering plate, remember to pray for someone else who is going through a hard time, invite a close friend to a meal…

yet in the equation that God presents in Scripture it is Jesus first, Others second, Yourself third [if you look closely at the order of those you can spy out the acronym JOY because that is where true joy comes from – a relationship of Loving God, Loving people and looking after the least of these] – oh sure you can find happiness without it, but joy is more of a God-ordained happiness that works so much deeper and invites other people in and is truly what kingdom living is all about – this thing was never meant to be a ME-focused thing… Jesus demonstrated that so hugely in the way He lived and taught and Loved.

so the bottom line of this post is really to challenge those of you who read it [who i imagine are already the YOU people, tune up those choir voices] to be aware of the YOU in your life – if Sunday church becomes about how the worship worked for you [instead of maybe how it pleased God] and what you got out of the preach [instead of what opportunities you took to connect with others, pray for them, invite them for a meal] and how it made you feel… and if your Monday to Saturday life is all about you and your family and does not contain much space for NEIGHBOURS of any type [classmate, business colleague, physical next door neighbour, person on street] then you could be stuck in the ME and needing to be a little more INTENTIONAL about seeking the YOU…

a ‘spot on’ thought from the lesser known younger brother of Pythagoras

okay, more than likely not, but if i had already named one child, ‘Pythagoras’ i’m thinking this name has to be in the running for my next child… [no, we’re not pregnant!]

‘Second-century Christian thinker Athenagoras wrote, “Our life does not consist in making up beautiful phrases but in performing beautiful deeds.”‘ [from this morning’s devotion in ‘Common Prayer: A liturgy for ordinary radicals’]

turns out Athenagoras [whose lesser known theorem “the shortest distance between two pints is a barstool” failed to set the mathematical world alight] and i were thinking the same thing this morning, except he thought his a few thousand years before me…

it is very easy to talk the talk and know what we are meant to do and how we are meant to treat people and so on… but when there is a knock at the door and you open it [at an inconvenient time, because surely needy people should come only when we want them to] there is usually a real person standing there, with real needs and real obstacles and it is rarely quick and easy [and comfortable and not requiring some kind of sacrifice]

and let’s be honest, i fail so many times at that point… with the gentle tune of mother teresa’s hit single “SMALL THINGS WITH GREAT LOVE, SMALL THINGS WITH GREAT LOVE” playing on repeat…

i mean, this is why i am here. and this is what my whole life is about [following the words and works of Jesus]. and so i should be doing it a lot better than the next person right? wrong.

sometimes i am irritated because i am in the middle of a meal. sometimes it is frustrating because i am tired after a long day of answering emails and making beds in the hospitality house. sometimes i just don’t feel like it. let’s be honest, i often just don’t feel like it.

but that IS why i am here. and that IS what my life is all about, in theory anyways. and as my buddy, Ath, points out: “Our life does not consist in making up beautiful phrases but in performing beautiful deeds.”

the “beautiful phrases” are nice and pretty and neat and organised and there when i want or need them to be.
it’s the “beautiful deeds” that require more time or effort or discomfort or grace or simply deciding to mean it…
and it’s messy. and that’s okay. and i probably need a lot more grace from God and people than the people arriving at my door do, just cos of how often i get it completely wrong. and a lot of the time my hope and prayer is simply that i can do better tomorrow than i did today…

intentional community… not always sexy and inspirational and life-transforming… but definitely worth it, in sickness and in health, and all of that…

rhythms and interruptio…i’ll get it!

life in intentional community can probably be described that way…

there are some daily and weekly rhythms that we have in place – some wisely put here by the people who occupied this space before us, and others that we have worked out as a community during out stay – morning prayer at 8am where we work through the book of Common Prayer together, followed by a conversation if there are visitors or else breakfast and a walk to the office where we work… on monday’s a group of local volunteers and neighbors come together to pack and hand out 30 really good bags of food… tuesday’s to thursday’s we have an after school program with some of the neighborhood children… friday night’s is a potluck dinner, and so on…

the rhythms we have in place echo some of the values we have – we value time spent in prayer and so five days a week we have a space created to pray and to invite others in to join us because we value community…

but because we value community and reaching out to those who would be known as ‘the least of these’ we also carve out space for the day to day interruptions…

the person knocking at our door late at nite because “they didn’t make it to the food distribution” for whatever reason… the fried down the street who is about to be evicted from her home… the kid knocking at the door and then peering through our mail slot who is desperate to borrow sueihn’s bicycle…

and so on.

do we answer every interruption? not at all, we would burn out or burn up or possibly simply spontaneously combust. we don’t have the energy [or sometimes the grace and love] to answer each one. sometimes a housemate will grab one because i don’t have the strength to answer the door. sometimes we will choose not to answer the door because we place value on helping people with love, and sometimes if you can’t give a loving response to someone in need, then no response is better.

the most annoying thing about these interruptions? they never come when we are ready for them. hence the name i guess. they come after a long day or in the middle of a game or conversation, or just as you are about to take that first sip of coffee and it’s at that moment sometimes that we really get to see what this intentional community thing is all about.

at the heart of it all, we are followers of Jesus [or trying to be] and His life was characterised by making space for the interruption – sometimes He allowed His time with God to be interrupted, sometimes people died because He allowed the interruption [although He did have a habit of raising them to life again] and yet each time someone felt valued and loved, and important. lives were completely transformed for ever, because Jesus didn’t find the rhythms and responsibilities so important as not to leave space for the interruption.

and so should we.

pot ‘o luck

so some friday nites we have a potluck at the village house [intern house of simple way] which means people come around and bring food and we share and eat and chat and stuff – sometimes we watch documentaries with the directors who filmed them and other times we just eat and chat and stuff.

last nite we had some people from a chinese church in philadelphia join us and we had a chinese food theme [except for one neighbor who refused to try and cook chinese food for chinese people and so made a thai dish instead – we were going to simply buy from the local chinese takeaway until Monkman stepped up to the stove and created a great stirfry tofu dish] and during the meal we all separated out and chatted to them and heard some of their stuff and shared some of ours. After the meal we showed two recent clips from stuff we’ve done at the simple way this year – the school supplies giveaway and the recent fall fest party for the kids – and then we did some Q and A.

that’s all really. small things with great love, that’s what we aim for. doesn’t feel hugely significant in the big scheme of world issues perhaps but a bunch of people got to feel loved and so did we and some good connections were made and stories shared. hopefully some inspiration and encouragement and challenge was passed across and hopefully some kingdom things will result. but it is such an easy thing to do is my point.

and so if you’re struggling with questions of ‘how do i get started on intentional community’, this might be a good way – have some folks round for a meal – it can be your neighbors in your street [even if you invite 40 and only 4 pitch up] or your colleagues at work or maybe some people at church or from your sports team that you’ve never really connected with. food is pretty universal and alluring and a good way to get conversations going.

what are you waiting for? the people aren’t going to invite themselves…

intention. all.

yesterday i took a 6 hour bus ride to pittsburgh for a conference i am attending with a friend of mine called matt pritchard. i sat for four hours not talking to the guy next to me and then the last two hours we somehow got chatting and it was so inspirational…

andrew was an interpreter who became a baker and really has a passion for being a man with a craft [he also does some incredible iconography painting but that’s another story] and the main focus of his bakery is different kinds of breads, especially those from eastern europe… then every thursday evening him and his family volunteer at a food distribution place in town and the bakery he works at [which his friend runs] supplies the bread…

i attended a community dinner at matt’s place which they do once a week [totally funded by the family in whose house their community are living] with about 30 people from all over and it started out a bit awkward for me as i didn’t know anyone and was feeling a bit out of it, but eventually managed to connect into a conversation through the merits of ‘the big bang theory’ and other tv programs and so vibed with a bunch of the people for a bunch of the time. but it was afterwards as people were cleaning up around me [i was helping clean up a cheesecake plate] that i got into a couple of conversations around the topic of intentional community and met a few people and got to hear what they were involved in and it was so inspiring.

and it got me thinking back to certain friendship groups or even church contexts back home [not saying this is a back home thing, think it happens a lot of the time over here as well] and how so many conversations make it to the movies, sport and food place and then go no further… and a lot of peoples’ lives seem to get to the movies, food, sport place and then go no further.

i have been privileged to meet some incredible people since coming over to americaland and being connected to the simple way [my role is hospitality so i generally get to connect with all the visitors who pass through in some shape or form and especially those who stay over at the hospitality house] and i imagine this big conference on community that starts later tonite will be a whole lot more of that – and often it’s almost overwhelming stuff that leaves me with a “flip am i doing anything?” kind of feeling just cos some people are doing so much stuff or having such a wide reach – changing communities and neighborhoods and even sometimes whole countries as opposed to simply influencing one or two people. [and i definitely know a bunch of people back home who are doing the same and some to some pretty huge life and community affecting extents]

i don’t know that i know how to express this amazingly now. i am certainly not trying to say people need to do more than they are if they are doing something. but a lot of people are just not doing anything – they are living at the level of movies, food and sport and it never gets deeper… when you stand before God one day He is going to ask who you fed, who you clothed, who you took a few minutes to ask their name and listen to their story, whose neighbor’s kid you sat with and helped with their homework and so on… not so much as a bunch of stuff to do but as an intentional reflection and living out of the love of Jesus shown to you.

if your life as a christian culminates in you going to a meeting once or twice a week with a bunch of people and it doesn’t invade your life beyond that then something is desperately wrong.  i wish i knew how to break this lived out message into peoples lives but i don’t. i want to stand on a mountain and scream it out as if that would help anyone to really ‘get it.’ as much as the Holy Spirit is the one that empowers this work, i still believe that there is some kind of responsability and personal accountability for getting off your butt and accepting His invitation.

if you find that the majority of your life is food, movies and sport conversations and it never gets deeper i want to deeply implore you to take a risk and jump beyond that. find a moment to introduce a life topic. if you’re doing some kind of intentional community or pouring into other peoples lives then bring that conversation up. ask a question. make a statement. just start with something. you’ll be blown away by how God will use it [think little boy with lunch at feeding of five thousand miracle – God will take your little bit and use it to His huge ends]

this is just written in the heat of the moment of having been challenged by this stuff for the last few days and maybe months. i will hopefully write something a bit clearer and more direct later when i have more time to think and express it better. but at least give it some thought. life is too short to just stick with movies, food and sport.

in your fa-ace, in your fa-ace, communi-ty communi-ty community-y-y

tbV and i have lived as part of the simple way community for more than three months now.  i may have mentioned that it’s the absolute best place we could be right now. [note clearly how this may not be the best place for you to be right now – hopefully where you are is and if not you should find it and get there quickly]

one of the things i like the most about living here is that community and intentional pouring into community is in my face every single day.

back home when i lived in stellenbosch, for the first couple of years i lived at the back of someones house with a big wall and gate and much protection from the community when you look back at it. the only people i knew in my street were some guys across the road who were on a ministry team for one of the local churches. beyond that i didn’t know a single name of a person in the street and doubt i could even identify a single face from a line-up.

now, even on my worst day, if there is a time when i am totally self-absorbed and over interacting with people and not in the mood, i am faced with community. some aspect of intentional community living happens every single day. from the village house [the name of the internship house we live in] where we stay with erica and aaron [aka monkman] to the people on the streets surrounding our house, and especially potter street where we have the most relationship with people. every day i walk down the street to work there is a conversation with a neighbour [who i know by name, usually], a kid screaming “hey Fish” across the street [most of the kids in the street call me “Fish” cos when I say “Brett” americans hear “Britt” most of the time and it just takes way too long to put right so i stick with my nickname] or a gentle nod of existence-acknowledgement with the teens at the end of the street.

it is incredible. there is a strong inner sense and feeling that this is how it is meant to be. [probably some of that is genetic, because my parents modeled it very well in terms of knowing their neighbours and being in and around their lives, just taken me a bit of time to catch on]. and on a good day there is a game of street dominoes with the men or helping one of the kids fix their bike puncture [yes dad, miracles are happening in this place] or inviting some of the neighbours into our house for nachos and a game of mexican train or stepping out into the street at 4am in the morning to be a presence in a potentially violent situation and help calm it down.

back home [and i imagine in the majority of the states and a lot of other countries] community can look a lot like a sunday meeting [altho a lot of people manage to go to a sunday meeting and leave it without even a hint of community] and possibly a small group meeting in someones home during the week.  because of the nature of living and working here, Val and i have not always been able to make the sunday meeting, but there is never a sense of no community happening in our lives.

john 13.34-35 ‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you mus love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.’

how each of us experience community does not have to look the same. that’s a given. but i truly believe all of us need to experience community. and i lean strongly towards believing that we need to experience it to some extent on a daily basis. how this looks for you is not important. that you have asked the question and are seeking to see it happen is.

i’d love to hear some comments on how you are seeking to live out intentionality community or what else God has been saying to you on the topic…