What are the winds that make this storm?

First, we have a rapidly ageing workforce, and a majority of the population will be beyond working age. Two major consequences flow from this: 1) that there will be less tax dollars to fund human services such as mental health, community development, youth work, family support etc; 2) a generation which is, in general, more likely to serve the community, is going to disappear soon.

Second, my wife came back from a work conference at which a Department of Human Services (DHS) senior bureaucrat foresaw the withering of the welfare sector as the financial crisis that is currently engulfing Europe inevitably finds its way to Australia. Funding to nonprofits and human services will be cut drastically, with the idea of the Big Society coming to the fore. The Big Society is a UK policy of devolution of responsibility for communities to the local level. Usually, I am all for a such a redistribution of power to the local level: it gives responsibility and ownership to people on the ground, who know what their community’s need. My first thought was – that’s great that the financial crisis has stimulated such a creative policy.

But then the crunch came.

Mark Sayers spoke at “Heartland”, a Christian youth work training event organised by Praxis and others in Bendigo. There, he mapped the cultural terrain that youth workers need to navigate. Mark’s main point is that youth and young adults approach life from a consumer perspective. That is, choices of all descriptions (phone, job, education, church, relationships) are re-framed in terms of what is good for the individual. The arena of decision-making has become the individual, rather than the community. Mark gave a rousing challenge to us there, to model wholehearted commitment to the cause of the reign of God.

You might be able to see the connections I’m making here. The factors of ageing population and financial crisis/Big Society require a new generation of people committed to the common good, who make decisions within that orbit rather than their personal needs. Great! But the pervasiveness of a consumerist worldview, across most of the population, means that people generally have a consumer approach to community service. I’ll do this homework club until I get bored; I’ll read to these kids until their parents frustrate me; I’ll visit the nursing home for as long as it’s ‘rewarding’; I’ll mentor those young people until I get a job offer interstate.  This consumer approach to community service doesn’t build a community, it undermines it. Let me say that this attitude is not limited to young people and young adults.

What is needed? A body of people committed to the wellbeing of others and the community beyond personal comfort, whose source of motivation comes from beyond what others can give me. Sounds like the Church. Jesus Christ’s outright denial of a culture of reciprocity, which consumerism relies on (I’ll buy this if it gets me that; I’ll participate if I get X), is the good soil in which commitment to the common good can be fostered. And here is where I get alternately despondent and hopeful. On the one hand, the Church is withering away in Australia, and its numerically successful instances often rely on consumerism. On the other hand, there is a new movement of Christians excited about mission, pouring energy into their neighbours, schools, workplaces and communal institutions – that gives me courage!

However, if this ethic of community service doesn’t get passed on, and if the Church’s better angels don’t win out, and if the welfare sector we have contracted to do our dirty work for us is simply not there to hold back the tide, what’s going to happen? Wholesale breakdown of society. I’m not usually given to hyperbole, but I don’t see another option. Feel free to provide a more hopeful one.

In that day, the oddest book in the Bible, Revelation, will become eerily sensible. When humanity is stripped bare, when all the props have been knocked out, all that we have left is “patient endurance”. The book of Revelation advocates that the Church be the Church – if we allow God to shape us into that Church, there’s some hope.

I’m nowhere near working all this out, but one initial thought is: perhaps we need to be a distinctive community that is consistent with Jesus, but endeavouring to be ‘not inconsistent’ (whenever we can) with the norms of the multiple subcultures we are faced with, while at strategic points being deliberately ‘of’ that culture or neighbourhood, and at other points being critical and standing against it. Our practice of incarnation needs to go beyond following the ‘pattern of Jesus’ so that a desired outcome will occur, and into “place-sharing” (Andrew Root) that hopes for transformation but is not beholden to it.

‘Where do I join this kingdom revolution?’

If you’ve read this far, you have probably already decided that you want to join this kingdom revolution. Next step is to find some people who want to do it with you. If you don’t have anyone like that, look up some of the communities mentioned previously. They’ll help you on your way.

Most importantly, do something. This movement is not about standing on the banks of the river while others swim by. It is about getting personally involved in people’s lives, people who are isolated, persecuted and poor. Knock on the door of the elderly neighbour. Stand up to bullies, be they small or large. Make peace. Spend a week’s coffee money on someone who actually needs it. Foster a child. Pray with a suffering parent. Invite the new person over for tea. Sit down with the loner at school. Sell your possessions and have a party for the outcasts. Tell the truth despite the consequences. Move to the wrong side of the tracks.

The disciples simply left their nets and followed, and Jesus wants nothing more and nothing less. Jesus doesn’t care how much we know, or what we are doing now, or what we’ve done in the past. He cares about where we’re headed. In the river of Jordan, John baptized Jesus in a symbolic drowning and rising to life. In following Jesus among the poor, we not only drown with all our inadequacies, flaws and sins, but rise to a new life of compassion, truth & justice.

The Road to Emmaus

‘Who can walk with me on this journey?’
Jesus walked with 12 disciples as he went about preaching, healing and casting out evil. Why? This journey of compassion & justice is joyful, but it’s also a battle against the forces of evil within ourselves and in our world. The pain in the world is real, and our own sin can often paralyse us. If we try to swim by ourselves, we will drown. We need others alongside us. It’s no surprise that Jesus sent out his disciples two-by-two and that the lion’s share of the New Testament is addressed to communities, not individuals.

Often you may feel alone as you feel your way into this way of compassion and justice. But there is a growing movement of Christians who are rediscovering the radical roots of our faith, who are seeing that life following Jesus means nothing less than allowing the Spirit to lead us into dark places, into hard places, to be light and life. We are discovering, to our surprise & joy, that Jesus was always walking before us, and beside us.

Visiting some of the communities in Part IV will put you in contact with many people who are on the same path. But if you can’t come, then check out some of these resources:

1. Websites/blogs:

• Mark Sayers Thinks
• Urban Neighbours of Hope (Sydney)
• Hold: this space
  
• Jarrod McKenna
• Mustard Seed Associates
• Marcus Curnow

2. Books:

• Not Religion, But Love (Dave Andrews)
• The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)
• Make Poverty Personal (Ash Barker)
• Check out some of my articles

3. Conferences/Gatherings/Training (Australia)

• TEAR Australia 2009
• Surrender 2010
• Just Salvos
  
• Forge
• UNOH

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

‘Where can I see this good news in action?’

Although we can read about it and hear about it, the good news of radical discipleship only makes sense when we see it in action. So many people, in history and in the world today, have chosen to take this path of downward mobility, setting their face against the world’s obsession with success and image, and seeking the image of God in the forgotten and destitute. See Father Damien as he moves to Moloka’i to live among the lepers for 16 years, sharing their joys and hardships, eventually succumbing to leprosy himself. Or Dorothy Day, who fed, clothed and housed the poor of the Depression while speaking out against war and violence.

In Australia and beyond, there are dozens of communities and organisations who have been inspired by Jesus to serve on the margins. These are just some of them:

Catholic Worker

Concern Australia

InnerCHANGE

UNOH

Urban Seed

Waiters’ Union

Youth For Christ Durban

Although this river of justice and compassion comes from one source, it has many branches. Visit some of these places and people and dip your toe in the water.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Back to the book. I love reading personal diaries of public figures because, like the journals of Thomas Merton, you get a sense of the tensions between their inner and outer lives. Dorothy Day’s public persona is forthright, confident and maybe a little tyrannical, but her diaries are full of frustration, of sadness, of doubt and constant wondering about how anything in the Catholic Worker movement will ever progress. But they are also full of reminders to herself that all hardships are a joy, an occasion for grace and personal growth towards God.

Day is intriguing in her combination of radical justice and intense devotion to God, even piety one might say. I noticed this when I lived at the Catholic Worker in Los Angeles; we kept public vigil against the Iraq War by morning and prayed the rosary by night. But her piety is not pious, if her descriptions of the folly and pettiness of her struggling movement are accurate. She pulls few punches in ventilating her spleen on any number of topics and people. At times it reminded me a workshop title that some friends of mine ran with on the topic of their missionary experience: “Telling the Poor Where To Get Off”….beautiful, awful and honest at the same time, which is my feeling about Duty of Delight. We are definitely not on this journey with Jesus to publicise our perfection.

At a couple of kilograms, Duty of Delight is a heavy read, but an easy one.

It is full-moon: the lunatics have come out. Jason and Tim, despite our pleas, hoist themselves into the roof with the aid of several telephone directories. Apparently they intend to exterminate the rat population that plagues our house.

Suellen, Kylie and I would not normally be too anxious – we knew that being “lead tenants”; to three boisterous teenagers would not result in peace and quiet. However, the landlord is here: the vicar of the church that owns our house is dining with us. He makes a Christian effort to relax in the face of roof antics and the attentions of Nat, who turns on the charm with his best religious jokes. What’s Jesus’ favourite band? Nine Inch Nails. What’s this (shape yourself as if crucified)? A prick of a way to spend Easter. Boom-boom. Plaster cracks in the roof and the vicar’s face tightens visibly. We laugh nervously.

Later that night, Jason and Tim play Limp Biskit full blast and tear palings from the fence that adjoins the church. Luckily, the vicar has departed. Tomorrow night the boys will break into my bedroom, retrieve the confiscated television and barricade themselves inside Tim’s caravan.

Most people do not want to build community, or even love others (with the consequence of community). Many, even most, people who are involved in Christian community ventures are attempting to compensate for their dysfunctional family experience, or attempting to replicate their positive family experience. Another way of putting it is that many Christians enter community hoping it will either replicate or heal their experience of family. This is particularly so when we are doing it for the first time. I had no initial fears of community as my family was strong, stable and secure…but the community certainly wasn’t. Others entered it hoping it would heal their wounds, yet carrying an underlying dread of the connections and trust that are necessary for community. Our way of being part of community is inevitably shaped by our experience of biological family life (good and bad). When someone is unhappy with an experience of community life, it is often because they are expected it to be the family they desire. For example, a young adult I lived with expected our community to be completely accepting and inclusive, as his family had failed to be. We failed also unleashing scathing criticism and judgement.

This dynamic is made tense by the fact that some aspects of community life are family-like, but not identical to families. Such communities as mine (covenanted, relational, intentional, missional) are not families in the biological or nuclear sense that most have experienced. It is not even like an extended family of the stereotypical Mediterranean variety. The sooner we realise this the better; then we can stop expecting our communities to be the family we wish we had, or the family we want to replicate.

So why did God create family? Not simply for the extension of the human race, but to guarantee that we would always possess an indissoluble link with others that can never be absolutely disowned. I can separate myself from community, reject my faith, cease contact with others; but I cannot ever rid myself of my blood which writes itself indelibly into my self. God made us so that we need connection with others, and gives us at birth a link not only with 2 parents, but with their parents and so back through the ages we have connections that we can’t break and more importantly, that we do not have to build ourselves. This is God’s grace at work – we cannot create these bonds; they are given to us. This is where the dynamic of family and Christian community really overlap. If, in community, we realise that God has gracefully created bonds of blood between us, then trust flows more easily – it has been given to us. The regular eucharistic command to partake of Jesus’ body and blood makes sense here: we are taking Jesus blood and body into our blood and body and so becoming one body, one blood, one family. It is only to the extent that Christian community is united to Jesus that we can truly call each other sisters and brothers in Christ.

When we first moved to Bendigo, another church plant also had moved from Melbourne not long before. They wanted to plant a church in the community where we live, and did a fantastic family fun day at a local primary school to let people know who they were. Though they believed in the theory of incarnational mission, none of them lived in the local area. In fact, the nearest home was 5km away! Needless to say, their efforts broke down quickly.

One of the ‘marks’ of the groups in the Seeds network is “Proximity to each other and the poor”. Leaving aside the valid and inevitable questions about the nature of poverty, is such a geographical focus necessary? Does it depend on the community being incarnated into? Incarnating into a CBD workplace won’t work at a geographical level. So, does place matter? At a very basic level I would say it does – simply because a bird won’t shit in its own nest; ie. we will naturally work for the good of the place we live in.

I don’t think geographical (or place-based) incarnation is in absolute necessity; Jesus wandered all over the place and let’s face it, most people these days are hardly anchored to a bit of land these days, if they ever were. But let me argue briefly for it anyway.

Encounters In poor communities where car transport is limited, place-based incarnation is crucial to the unplanned and ‘intentionally natural’ encounters with people. To get to know someone, planned encounters only go a little way because real relationship occurs when we see people in unexpected situations and times.

Exilic theology In Jeremiah’s famous ‘letter to the exiles’ (Jeremiah 35??) he exhorts the people of God to work for the good of the place they have been exiled to. While it seems an encouragement to resignation, I believe it gives us the encouragement  to be re-formers of our neighbourhoods. And to do that, I believe we need to be there when we don’t plan to be.

Means and ends If our vision of the reign of God is, as mine is, individuals-in-community relating in a Christ-like way to people, land and God, then we are bound to the land. We cannot be faithful to this vision without being bound to some land ourselves. Means and ends need to be, and in fact are always, identical.

Erik Erikson, the developmental psychologist, identified 8 stages of development in which a core tension must be resolved before a person is able to grow. For young adults, the tension is ‘Intimacy vs. Isolation’. They must resolve questions of long-term partnering, where to live, what to do with their life. It’s a sociological fact of Western societies that young adults are deferring the resolution of this tension through university study and the tendency to stay in the family home until their late twenties and beyond (as an aside, this fact has an economic dimension – and how does this affect Christian communities?). In his book “Secret Men’s Business”, John Marsden addresses how adolescent boys become men. Although the book is about ‘boys to men’, it’s also about leaving home to find home. Indeed, Marsden insists that boys must leave home to become men, as well as defeat their fathers. It’s all part of leaving the symbolic home. Erikson thought that failure to resolve a core tension results in stagnation and immaturity.

Christian communities of purpose will often become secondary or tertiary homes for those who have left home, or moved on from study, and are still trying to resolve the tension of ‘intimacy vs. isolation’. To an extent, this is OK – in fact, I wouldn’t have decided to take the path I have if I wasn’t able to experiment with radical discipleship through the alternative home of Christian community. But if the journey of following Jesus can start with that alternative home, it can’t end there, or our discipleship will stagnate. Sooner or later we need to leave the nest. The difficulty for Christian communities is that young adults are often the most energetic and vibrant members! For their spiritual health they will need to leave, but encouraging them to do so seems like self-harm. I think we can only trust in the mysterious economy of God – a kind of redeemed prosperity doctrine in which those we farewell will go on to be a blessing to others and we will receive as we give.