Woodstock revisited, or just plain odd?

Many of you know that last January Debbie, Eli and I moved into an 8 bedroom house with a bunch of other folks. We call it "intentional community," you may just call it weird.

So I thought I'd take just a moment to try and explain at least a little bit about why we made this decision. I cannot explain it all in a short amount of space, and I'll expand more on this subject in my upcoming second blog, which will have more journal type entries. But I figured you all deserved at least some explanation of this weird little phenomenon.

Debbie and I profess Christianity, along with 70% of the American population. And as Christians, as you might guess, we have spent a little time trying to understand what this guy Jesus was talking about and teaching in his short time on earth nearly 2,000 years ago. The scary thing is, as we moved in and around the Church (note the capital "C", meaning God's church, not a particular denomination or affiliation), we saw that maybe all of us who profess Christianity have gotten quite a ways away from the things that Jesus plainly taught. Unity for example (40,000 protestant denominations and counting). Growth through relationship is another example- We kind of believe that the way God causes us to grow is primarily through each other; other people are used by God to sharpen us. This is contrary to our private, individualistic lives we lead here in America. Third, Jesus was pretty adamant about caring for other people, even going so far as to place them before our own needs and desires, if you can believe that.

So we said to ourselves, if we are going to take our beliefs seriously within the context of our current culture, how might it look? How could we best learn to practice what Jesus taught? And so 5 years ago we began a discussion with some close friends about how we might learn these things through the vehicle of community. The fruition of those discussions was our little fellowship that formed in January. We are learning a great deal, as you might guess, and growing in ways we didn't expect.

We are discovering that community is a good way to learn how to be transparent, practice grace, and serve others. It is not the only way, but it is a way. And the community is slowly changing and evolving into its intended identity. I will keep you posted on the general happenings of our community on this blog, but there will probably will be more detailed thoughts and reflections in my soon-coming second blog.(In fact, here is the updated link)

So we're not a cult, and we're not high. Don't worry family, everything is as normal as can be. ;)