As we have started working through what community life looks like in Chicago over the last few weeks, I am both encouraged by what I see and sadden. Encouraged because I see endless opportunity, which for me is refreshing and full of hope. There is already a lot of great work going on in the city and in our area. We have meet a few people interested in new ways of doing life, but fewer than I thought. I am sadden by this and honestly, very shocked. Having walked with great and challenging friends for the last six years, I thought these ideas for community and a new Christian life together were more wide spread than it turns out they are. This is not to discount the great work people are doing, just to say it is different than I expected. What I have found is myself and the story of Communality as a spectacle for all of these new names for Christianity and the church. The story that Jen and I have lived for the past few years, seems to be more compelling than the work of doing it together. Which I guess I should not be surprising.
In my typical analyse and fix mode, I have been trying to decipher why this is the case. I did not realize the ideas of our local and global community where so different than that of the mainstream and popularized Christian life. Maybe I assumed too much and that it was a more "natural" approach, than it is in reality. The story seems to be interesting to others, but the praxis seems foreign. Why is it so foreign? My only guess is because it is so simple to state and so hard to put into practice. Especially when your passed context has been a sermon where someone told you the three "nuggets" and to go home and pray about it in solitude.
Live a rich life deeply connected with others and partnering together to do kingdom work where you find it. Seems clear enough. I guess our culture is missing a context or experience with what it means to be deeply connect, let alone, living a deeply connected missional life together. I can understand why that is tough to take, as it always is for me too, but I did not think it would be disabling.
