Abundant Nutrition is Brooke’s new holistic health counseling practice that she has started. Her first newsletter, Seasons, was sent out today. If you’re interested in being on the list to receive the bi-monthly newsletter shoot her an e-mail at thelivinghome [at] gmail [dot] com. She’s also offering an introductory free one-hour consultation to anyone who is interested.

Kind of last minute information, but I will be at the Organic Church Movements conference in Ontario, CA next week. I’m looking forward to hanging out with K. Rains and the other great people that will be there. Matt Casper and I will be doing a main session together on Saturday. I will also be a part of a city transformation panel workshop on Sunday morning as well. If you can make it please come!

Oh, and the family and I will be in LA this Friday for the SUM graduation.

- Jason

Our January newsletter/fundraising letter went out yesterday in the mail. If you are interested in reading the newsletter you can click here to download a pdf of it. RSVP for the Info Nights as soon as possible.

I am convinced that one of the greatest barriers for the Church in the U.S. is our captivity to the capitalist-consumer identity. It has become so ingrained into our daily life that we do not see how deeply it pervades our habits. I have spent some time away from the institutional circles of the Church and have recently began to dialog with Christian denominational and organization officials. One thing has stood out to me: we are often blind to our enslavement. Ideals such as productivity and “money” as the prime metaphor for “time” are so wedded to how we live that we do not notice that these supersede ideals such as discipleship or the Christian calendar as the primary lens through which we view time.

It is one thing to change forms in order to prophetically call the Church back to her primary identity. But often, we fail to notice how even the varied forms we may employ are still attached to ideals that are not Christian. From my perspective, this is what many of us are attempting to do: to assist the Church in returning to it’s identity as the Body of Christ rather than a religious commodity or political lobby. At the core of this, we realize that many of the forms that have evolved during the reign of Enlightenment have allowed the few to have power over the many. When abused this is grotesque and many of us who have risked the scorn of our spiritual families have met many who have fended the worst of the abuses of Christian authority. (Sometimes, I am amazed that we are criticized for our critique and labeled cynics… if they only heard the stories and held the sobbing wounded.)

If we are to be a priesthood of all believers than we must make the effort of re-imagining what the Church might look like if these “handles” over the people were to not be in place. The unfortunate truth is that for many, their lively hood depends upon this dominance. And so, for even greater reason, we must reconsider what it is to be the Body in the 21st Century.

Having spent some years in the construction industry, I can confidently say this: all structures are flawed. They are crafted by flawed people and therefore any building has it’s weaknesses. Organizational structures are the same. I don’t want to suggest that the metaphor I want to explore is flawless. It is not. That said, I have found this to be a helpful experiment and a worthwhile meditation.

I have recently been interested in co-operatives as a model for understanding the Church. More specifically, local, geographic expressions of the Church; a congregation. I’ve been reading through the website of the International Co-operative Alliance website. While churches cannot qualify as true co-operatives, there are potentially shared values and defining characteristics. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on those commonalities.

The ICA defines a co-op as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” Let’s look at some of the pieces of this statement. First, a co-op is comprised of people that have “united voluntarily”. This implies that people choose the be associated with each other. But “associated” isn’t even as strong as the word “united”. In a consumer culture such as ours, the Church is often treated as a commodity. Therefore, the local church is not a group of people we choose to be united with. Rather, it is the event of the week that we attend to get our spiritual goods. People at this event have only a utilitarian purpose in our lives. To be the church in a more holistic manner, we could benefit from considering this powerful definition. To be the Church is to choose unity with those that also choose the way of the Kingdom through Jesus.

What does that look like? The ICA definition continues to assist us here. The co-op (or local church) is united “to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs”. Recently, I’ve had a couple conversations with pastors that have confided that beginning a discussion of personal finances with their congregations would be virtually impossible. Why? It would seem that the Early Church set a precedent for sharing personal economic information. Just read the Book of Acts. We live in a culture in which we find much of our identity through economics. We find identity through what we purchases with money. We have social status based upon our perceived income level. We receive favor from others by the amount of money we spend on them. We buy things to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

If we read some of Jesus’ last words to his disciples in what is known as the Great Commission, this segment of Scripture can be understood to say that Jesus is encouraging his closest friends to initiate people into a community in which their primary identity is a Trinitarian identity. In a culture in which the almighty dollar is a primary identifier it seems only appropriate that discipleship would start here: re-ordering the place of money in our lives.

Secondly, a co-op relates to the “social and cultural needs” of the participants. For many church attenders, we see our fellow congregants only once a week. Twice at best. What would it mean to share more of our social lives? What would mean to have more of a shared life? It would certainly reflect positively on our co-discipleship. What would it require of us? it would certainly be harder to participate in a “commuter church”. It would require that we take on something akin to a parish mentality. That our church is defined by those people within a certain geographic proximity. Amongst Matthew’s House and the Collective we have often talked about the kind of discipleship, or accountability, that happens when you see people at their mailbox, rushing their kids out the door for school in the morning or stubbing their toe while mowing the lawn.

There is a difference between social and cultural needs though. I think that when the local church meets people within their culture it means we are to uncover the Gospel message within that culture. William Stringfellow talks about this as finding the Word of God in the world. This is what the local church should be engaged in. Rather than extracting people from the world they have been placed in we are to assist people in interpreting their work culture, family culture and popular culture through the lens of the Message of Jesus. An Indian friend of ours often says, “If God could redeem Hebrew culture, he can redeem any culture.”
This is a long start. I plan to work through the ICA’s principles as well. That will come in upcoming posts.

Last night, we read this passage:

He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

God’s Spirit is on me;
he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.”  Luke 4.16-21 (The Message)

We pondered on what this means in San Diego, a city in which recent local news continues to report on rising hate crimes and one of the lowest food stamp participations in large cities across the country. Not only is San Diego not feeding the poor, they are brutalizing them. How can the Church in San Diego embody this Good News in this city? Lord, show us.