The year after I graduated from college I worked at a church in Boston, Massachusetts. My job was to develop children and youth programs within a congregation where there were not very many young people of any variety. As I started my job, I naturally gravitated to the few other young people in the church: the newly ordained curate, a young married woman who lived down the street from the church, and the sexton and his wife, who happened to live in the fourth floor apartment of the church. The five of us spent many hours together – initially as we served the Tuesday evening dinner for the homeless community each week and then later we started meeting for coffee to share our lives together. We began reading books – I remember animated conversations in the church garden discussing Herman Hesse’s, The Glass Bead Game but we read and discussed books about theology and church history too. At one point we started an art studio in an unused classroom turned storage space, trying our hand at painting and sculpting together. We started meeting regularly to cook and eat dinner together and plan our next project or experiment. It was during this year together that I heard my own call to the priesthood. Each of us, in fact were working out our vocation together – trying to understand what God was asking us to do with this life.
It’s only now, looking back, that I see the way this small group of people who met and bonded together for a short period of time helped shape my life and ministry. We needed each other as colleagues, as friends, as followers of Jesus. We were what I would now call a community of practice. One of the things I am learning in my work with fresh expressions is that people are tired of sitting in rooms behind the closed doors of the church and talking about what we might do. I think we are tired of planning and watching and waiting. Young adults, but I believe Christians of every age, want to stop talking about their faith and want to start practicing it. But we are scared – we are scared we can’t really live the way of Jesus. And without a community of people to support us and challenge us and force us to try new things – we will probably just keep talking.
So I wonder what would happen if we started to form these kinds of communities – small groups of people who commit to an experiment together. What if we made art together? What if practice contemplative prayer? What if we gather each week to meet face to face with the homeless or marginalized in our community? And what if we have dinner together afterwards to talk about our experiences? What if the Christian life was less like an art museum and more like an art studio? Would you be willing to join such a group? Who might you invite to form a community of practice? Are there people who don’t go to church but are curious about Jesus that might be willing to join in your experiment? I believe that these communities of Christian practice are reshaping the church today from the outside in. I know that these kinds of communities have helped me learn what it means to be a follower of Jesus and have framed the landscape of my faith life. I see God’s movement in our world stirring up new communities who are challenging each other to live the way of Jesus. I challenge you to join in.
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