A New Year Epistle
December 30, 2009
Dear CCC,
One of my commitments when I returned from sabbatical in August was to rejoin the life and community of Covenant in order to discern, with you, what we might be called to do and be in the coming years. Over these four months I have tried to give witness to what has been happening in me, our church, Louisville and the world – listening to where the Spirit is at work within us and around us.
What I am discerning, and will seek to address with this long letter – an epistle, is the realization that over the past year or so we have been growing in the area of our communal journey (WITH) – which is a blessing. However, to be a more balanced and transformative community in the future it may be time to refocus our creative energy and intentions on the outward journey (OUT).
Covenant was formed on a model that seeks to balance the spiritual, communal and outward journeys (IN, WITH, OUT). When these three journeys are in balance we are able to most effectively be the transformative community of God’s Shalom.
We describe the “outward journey” as the place or places where we are creatively participating in God’s work of creating peace, justice, wholeness and celebration. We often quote Fredrick Buechner who says, “God calls us to the place where our deepest passion meets the world greatest need.”
The structure that we have emphasized from the beginning that seeks to balance the In, Out and With is centered around a shared outward journey i.e. Intentional Communities (ICs), or as we say, “Intentional Communities are where we are the most intentionally church.” Our yahoo egroup name “CommunitiesOfShalom” represents this original emphasis of our model.
Our energies, however, have been shifting over the past several years from Intentional Communities to a more centralized church model focused on weekly worship service. In our original model, worship was in service to and a celebration of the work of Intentional Communities. It was an important and central spiritual practice, however it was not intended to be the primary emphasis of our community. Over the past several years the worshiping community has been growing significantly, yet we have fewer ICs than ever.
This shift to a more centralized form of community life has been slowly happening for a couple of reasons. We have needed to focus our energies on creating structures to care for the growing needs of CCC (WITH.) Following are examples of WITH structures that we created.
First, we changed the structure of our session, from being made up of representatives from each Intentional Community to having representatives from the larger community. After last year’s Church-wide retreat, five areas emerged as being important for the Session to focus on. They were:
• Sustainability
• Children and Youth
• Intentional Communities
• Communication
• Hospitality
These teams have done a fabulous job facilitating and managing the growth we are experiencing. However, a by-product of that growth is that we have spent a lot of our energy and time on our WITH structures – structures that support our life together as CCC. This is a subtle shift of our original focus from, “What are you called to do in the world and how can we help?” to “What are you called to do in CCC and how can we help?” This shift changes the primary question we ask CCC participants and our understanding of ourselves as a community.
Second, in an effort to build relationships among CCC participants we created the Supper Clubs, which have been a huge success and a wonderful means of relationship building. This program provided for ways to be connected and engaged with CCC that did not involve Intentional Communities.
Third, several years ago we created the Center For Integral Spirituality which emphasized the inward journey (IN.) and through the Shema Groups we invited CCC participants and others to make a significant commitment to a nine-month program of personal formation. While successful, again this was emphasizing a non IC-related area.
Fourth, over the past several years we needed to focus our energy on financial sustainability and more on caring for the building of James Lees. These are important structures for our health and continued growth, but again they emphasize a centralized organizational structure and space, and subtly deemphasize the Intentional Communities which primarily meet in homes.
All of these WITH and IN structures that we have been creating are good, beneficial and needed, but they have shifted the focus of our community and how we spend our time, money and express our gifts.
When Covenant first started we were asked how we would define and measure growth and success. We said it would be measured by our creative work of justice and compassion in the world through Intentional Communities and not by how many people we had attending a worship service – which is the traditional definition of church growth. We understood that to be at a place to engage in creative social transformation was a sign of deep discipleship and a by-product of a healthy inward and communal journey.
We intended for CCC to be a church OF INTENTIONAL COMMUNTIES however it seems to be becoming a CHURCH WITH Intentional Communities. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad with this shifting emphasis, unless it is not what we want or intend and if it is not the structure we believe will help us participate most fully in God’s Shalom.
My concern is that if we do not take a significant look at the direction in which we are headed, we may unintentionally move into a “programmatic” model of church which, in my opinion, tends to be overly focused on the WITH journey and does not posses the same potential for personal transformation and social change.
Again in my opinion, programmatic centralized models of church often embody a modern worldview with individualistic and consumeristic values – where the church becomes a provider of services and programs instead of a community of disciples empowered to participate in God’s Shalom. It is understandable that we would naturally and subtly move in a more traditional direction because this is the reigning worldview of our culture and the type of church models from which most of us have come.
I am hoping for and wanting to place before you another option for our growth. Over this next year, we can shift our focus and energy and collectively embody a different future that is more balanced and centered on the OUTWARD journey. I am wondering if the image and model of a “Network” or a “Community” of Communities would provide us with a guiding vision to refocus our energy and intentions and create new structures for our growth.
If we collectively decide this is a direction we want to embody in the coming years then I have some practical suggestions for how that might happen. Some of them are very simple and natural, requiring little change, while others are more significant and demanding.
Over the next couple of Sundays, January 4 & 11, I will be preaching on these ideas and we will have an opportunity to discuss their potential implications during the communal meal. The Session has designated January and February as a period of “Intentional Conversation” around the issues and opportunities for our future growth. Please make the communal meal a priority over these months and be involved in these conversations.
Suggestions On How We Might Grow in the Outward Journey
1) Make a communal commitment to 2009 being the year we focus on the “Outward” Journey.
a. Have Sermon series in January exploring the outward journey from different perspectives.
b. Focus our Community Retreat (February 28 – March 1) on discerning different outward focuses and being a spring board for new Intentional Communities.
2) Create an “Outward Team” to help us better understand the outward journey and create structures to cultivate it personally and communally.
3) Reaffirm and commit to Intentional Communities as our most central and intentional way of being Church and the primary way we express our outward calling and social creativity.
a. Reaffirm our Intentional Community Covenant – “We covenant to continue the life long journey of discerning our call and will seek, when able, to live its outward expression through the structure of Intentional Communities.”
b. Define and re-commit to the essential structure of Intentional Communities
i. Group is formed around the outward journey
ii. Balance of IN, WITH, OUT
iii. Meet weekly
iv. Have trained and rotating leadership roles
4) Create the needed Structures to cultivate new and existing Intentional Communities
a. Teach essential elements of Intentional Communities (i.e. Discerning Call, Leadership Roles, Introduction to Intentional Communities)
b. Revise and make readily available the “Intentional Community Handbook”
c. Set a two-year goal for starting new communities
5) Create structures that support and cultivate CCC as Network of Communities – Communities of Shalom
a. Redo web sight emphasizing Intentional Communities
b. Emphasis on IC in worship services
6) Help create larger structures of Network in which CCC is one Hub among many.
a. Invite other communities (churches and organizations) into Network (multiple Hubs) sharing ICs and discerning what is essential and central for participation in Network.
b. Network would be primarily responsible for supporting and equipping Intentional Communities which would be shared among (Hubs – worshiping communities)
c. Create Network Learning Center – Teaching IC Model, IN, OUT, WITH, & Discernment
d. Dedicate one Sunday a month to Network celebration experience where all the hubs and communities could gather for celebration and collaboration seeking to support trans-community Intentional Communities and social change.
7) Start New Worship Services/Hubs/Communities As Part of Network
a. Discerning contexts (target groups) for new services/communities
b. Discern type of service/community (ethos, charisma) for context
c. Discern, recruit and support leadership teams
d. Possible New Communities (Worship Experiences/Hubs)
i. Multi-cultural
ii. Contemplative
iii. Young Adult
iv. Justice
Questions for consideration:
1) What type of structures, staffing and leadership do we need to empower and facilitate these possibilities?
2) How do we refocus our budget to facilitate these possibilities?
3) What other communities can we approach about participating in the Community of Communities Network?
