New season, new projects

It's been a while since I've blogged, but life has changed pretty drastically for me. I'm in a place of moving from vision to reality, from concept to practice. Seeking a form of wisdom the g(r)eeks called phronesis, which only becomes necessary when one is thinking in community. To break the ice off of an old and disused blog, I want to describe the shape of my life and to lay out some projects which I am going to write about here.

Sitz im Leben:

For the first season since infancy, I am not engaged with formal education. This means that I am working, and that my work is not something I am doing to "get through school", but rather is what occupies me. I cook at a cafe in downtown Lynchburg, called the White Hart. I am a 1/3 owner of the venture, which might be worth something in time. The real pay off is that it allows me the ability to stay in Lynchburg and be minimally employed while pursuing other interests. I work around 40 hours a week, but I spend a good portion of this work time chatting with and building relationships with people, which is the real priority of that time. I also spend significant time reading, also a priority. As such, the White Hart is an accidental, but a nice accidental to be sure.

When I'm not at the White Hart, I can almost always be found in community. I don't go "home" from work, since I take my work to be ministry to the ekklesia I am bound with. I am always in community. We feast and learn and recreate on Sundays, we meet for prayer, we meet for discussion, we meet for meals. And if I have things my way, we're going to be in community more-and-more in more-and-more meaningful ways in the future. We call our gathering Hill City Church, but this is just something I chose as an alternative to Converge, which is a word that leads to a long and interesting genealogy which would distract from this post....Pressing on, we consider ourselves a house church, except for the fact that we meet at the White Hart, which is a coffee shop. We do not apologize for being small, intentional, and radical. This means that we concern ourselves with discipleship to Jesus.

Out of this desire to follow Jesus, we are also endeavoring to establish a community house, in the rough outline of a Catholic Worker hospitality house, minus the shoddy theology. This means being downwardly mobile in loving, ie. moving toward, our slavery to Christ, in open rebellion to the commands of mammon. The house will come to exist in stages, and we are not quite in stage one yet.

Stage 1: Buy house. Get a community rhythm (eat together, pray together, pay of our debt together, work together, serve the poor together). Learn practical skills (gardening, baking, soap making, wood working, etc). Learn together (informal school of biblical languages, theology, and philosophy [and maybe pick up some instruments for music making as well]).

Stage 2: Create hospitality space (furnish basement with bunks, outdoor shower, etc). Practice sabbath and hospitality. Call disciples, live with the poor, work together. Create a network of churches and elders with a vision for the Church of Lynchburg and sabbath economics.

Stage 3: Buy farm land. Build house 2 if necessary. Create informal university (agronomic). Continue to experience the grace of God by planting, sowing, and feeding.

We are, God willing, about to close on the first house, so when I say we aren't IN stage 1 yet, it's trivially true. Also, this vision will take at least my lifetime to really see come to fruition, and possibly more. Further, this vision will require the help and contributions of many people from many gatherings in Lynchburg. This is much bigger than just myself, obviously. Lastly, the value of this isn't the hope that once stage 3 is completed, we will finally be able to "do" God's will, or to fulfill the Great Commission, which would be a false hope of utopia, the nowhere-place. Rather, it's the journey, through which we confess our adoration for God in our obedience to Christ, which is important. We may not make it all the way, but our lives, our Christ-adventure, will provide an apologetic which will be radiant and salty to the world, and which God may see fit to use to call many sons to resurrection. When we start to live trinitarian life, making Christ the mediator of all our relationships, the anxiety of success/failure becomes absurd. Seek first the kingdom...

The next post will outline some ways in which I will use this blog to formulate thoughts along the journey.