So a friend of mine participated in an internship hosted by a missional order. His experience with this group was superb. He was growing in his faith, enganging with his neighbors and neighborhood missionally, and experiencing a rich common life with allies that he deeply cared about. Shortly after the internship ended, he along with his wife moved to a new city. Upon arriving he immediately began looking for another couple or family that he could share life with in ways similar to what he just experienced in his internship. They met a young family that seemed to be on the same page…. after 2 painful years of trying it became evident that they were not on the same page and they would likely never be… by and large it felt like they were spinning their wheels for 2 years and just waiting for things to click. It never did.
I’ve heard this story repeated several times in various forms. This is what motivates me to write a rule of life….
First, what is a rule of life? The most famous rule by far, the Rule of St. Benedict, has been the basis of the vast majority of monastic communities for over 1500 years. It clearly describes how a person can join the community and what they can expect and what will be expected of them once they do. A rule could also be described as a ‘curriculum of Christlikeness’ – a specific way that people are formed into the image of Christ by via common practices; for Benedict 2 common practices were paramount: praying the Psalms daily at seven set times and individually practicing ‘lectio divina,’ a meditative reading of Scripture.
The purpose, benefits and uses of a rule of life for a community could be summarized as orientation, formation, and replication.
Orientation: A rule of life is a written document that describes what is expected of the members of a community. It can be read and pondered before someone decides to join so they clearly know what they are getting into. The fewer the surprises the better.In Benedict’s community’s the rule was read out loud to incoming members. As you can imagine there isn’t a lot of “but you never told me I had to…” in Benedictine communities.
Formation: The rule is a tool for transformation. It sets the parameters of what the common life will look like and spells out the practices that will guide the member toward transformation.
Replication: When it comes time to start a new community the rule sets the standard for what it will look like, feel like, be like. It is a template for what new communities will be like.
One key thing (that deserves a post of its own) is that rules take a lot of pressure off the ‘leader’ to make things up as they go along. The template is there. The path is clear. The leader can focus on caring for the actual people of the community because nearly all the fundamental questions of “how do we…” have already been answered.
How have you seen written documents (rules of life or manuals or even job descriptions and operations manuals) function in ways that were helpful to you?
Yes, I have started blogging in earnest again. No, I doubt that many people really care. I once had a pretty good “following” of my blog. People who were interested in house churches, or new monasticism or intentional community or bi-vocational ministry… some really interesting people used to read that blog and many of them started their own blogs and had a lot of great things to say and could say it very well.
But That season has passed. There are parts of that which still interest me of course. But also have new interests and a desire to integrate past learning with new directions and fresh applications. Blogging for me has always been about making sense of my life and finding the deeper purpose. It has truly been an online journal where I publicly wrestled with sincere questions (see my last post) and tried to gain understanding about the pieces of my life all in the wider context of following Christ. I am by nature an innovator, an experimenter. Having a place to write about my findings and my confusion was more than helpful, it was essential so I wouldn’t get ‘lost in the sauce’ as the chef’s say.
So, I’m writing again. Here’s what hasn’t changed.
I’m still following Christ and wanting to get better and better at obeying him and being like him but in my context and time. He’s not only a hero but a present teacher and guide for my life.
I’m still living ‘in community’ (going on 15 years now) i.e. I share a home not only with my immediate family but also with several friends that are allies in the pursuit of seeing God’s kingdom come and his will be done in west Norwood and in our various spheres of influence. We have a rhythm of morning prayer and evenings meals and weekly ‘church’ meeting. I’m hoping and planning on an even more shared weekly rhythm in the months and years ahead.
I’m still a part of Vineyard Central and in a house church connected to it.
I still own an auto body shop in central Cincinnati (Norwood) but I’m no longer really bi-vocational as that is all I’m doing professionally at the moment.
I’m still pursuing my doctorate at George Fox University and seminary and if I can just sit down enough times at this computer and get my dissertation written I will be finally and fully done.
And that brings me full circle to this blog. That is the direction I’m heading. I’m writing about topics that will eventually make their way into my dissertation. “What is my dissertation about?” is the #1 question I get asked when people find out I’m doing a doctorate. I intend to write a curriculum for Christlikeness as a basis for a new missional monastic order. It’s first application will likely be an internship that is run in the Brownhouse and possibly another house or 2 in west Norwood but it will be open for anyone who wants to follow our rhythm of life in their own context. The actual writing will end up as a web based prayer-book/ discipleship manual with the current working title of “The book of common life.” (that title was given to me; Thanks and credit to Mike Helm).
There’s a debate raging right now at least in my head. I have been reading in the general category of “personal development” for some time now and recently stumbled across what seem to me on first read some divergent data. I’m trying to reconcile them if possible or figure out which one is right if I can’t. Can someone help me out here?
Here’s the summary:
1. Position one: You are born with innate, unique abilities and strengths therefore spend time figuring out what they are and build on them. If you spend your time focusing on your weakenss, at the end of the day (or your life) all you’ll have is ’strong weaknesses.’ The proponents of this line of thinking are man including Tom Rath who wrote Strenght’s finder 2.0, and Marcus Buckingham in Now Discover Your Strengths, and Strategic Cocah, Dan Sullivan. I have been influenced by all these men.
2. Position two: You are capable of achieving greatness in any pursuit if you are willing to practice hard enough and smart enough long enough. Specifically you must practice for 10 years in very deliberate, specific ways but if you do a level of performance can be achieved in any pursuit. This position is put forward by Geoff Colvin in Talent is Overrated which is really an expansion of a seminal idea/article published several years ago called “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” by K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer (avaialble online via Google search).
Perhaps they are talking about different things and I’m unintentionally setting up an unecessary conflict here. For me however as I move forward in developing myself and helping those around me develop it seems important to know where to put the effort: on overcoming weaknesses or strengthening strengths.
Thoughts?
Before moving onto the all important topic of the Last Supper/Lord’s supper I wanted to take a brief detour and get some extra thoughts out about shared meals in general. i was re-reading this morning some thoughts by Jean Vanier in Community and Growth and I was reminded again of this down to earth genius and the depth of experience he brings to all things community. He has a section on meals right at the end of Community and Growth that is worth a long, hard look. So this, in the spirit of a discussion on food, is simply and appetizer summary of his thoughts.
- Meals are for joy and recreation not work and strained conversation
- Meals and love have linked for us since infancy since we were dependent on someone caring for us enough to feed us.
- Laughter helps digestion.
- Self service meals (buffets) are a horrible idea. Sometimes just passing the potatoes brings someone out of isolation and allows them a very practical way to express love for another. (keep in mind he is dealing with very wounded, broken people in his communities who suffer from MRDD issues. Also keep in mind we are all wounded and broken and probably don’t even realize the depth of it and need this simple advice as much as anyone. Myself majorly included.)
- Meals are about more than food… they are about conversation, connection, laughter, sharing, beauty etc.
- Eating well does not mean eating expensively. Simplicity is good and can be beautiful.
I recently had a conversation with my tee-totaling parents who I love dearly but who almost never imbibe alcohol that ended with me saying, “I’m not sure how anyone who calls themselves a Christian can go to a wedding and not drink wine. Christ actually extended a wedding celebration by making more wine.” This is how I justify homebrewing (“Just trying to be like Jesus!”) and how I challenged my parents who seemed judgmental about wine at Christian weddings. Two birds, one stone. Now I also have several friends and family members (which is partially why my parents, especially my dad don’t drink) who’s lives have literally been destroyed by drinking too much. So there’s that side of the story as well… but that is outside the scope of this post.
What i really want to do in this post is talk about Christ’s approach to food and drink and celebration and the social-political-religious statements he made in how he ate and drank and who he ate with. I found a great littel summary of this in the book The Emergence of the Church by Arthur G. Patzia. So first off i want to credit my source. Now i want to plunder it.
Jesus ate with tax collectors (the socially despised) like Matthew (Matthew 9), ditto on Zaccheus the wee little man (Luke 19.5), women – the lowest ranking citizens of the time – like Mary and Martha (Luke 10.38-42) and many “sinners,” the religiously “unclean and undesirable” which enraged the religious establishment (Matthew 9.11, Luke 5:30, 15.1-2, Mark 2.16). He also undoubtedly ate many meals with his closest followers and apprentices the most famous being what we call “Last Supper” on the night he was betrayed. Multiple times he fed the large crowds that followed him (Matthew 15.32-39; Mark 2, 6, 8; Luke 9; John 6). He also alluded to an epic, universal banquet (Matthew 22, 25; Luke 12-14) that would be coming.
I don’t think it is overstating it to say that eating and drinking were a major component of Jesus’ work and mission. Tomorrow i want to look more deeply at how the ‘Last Supper’ (the one Jesus ate on the night he was betrayed) became the ‘Lord’s supper’ (the central element of Christian worship from the start).
Eat well.
“To the oriental every table fellowship is a guarantee of peace, of trust, of brotherhood. Table fellowship is a fellowship of life.” Joachim Jeremias
For most people for most centuries past eating together was a sacred act that would bind one life to another. It was covenantal. What has eating become for us? In my own experience and with just a casual observation of pop culture, how we eat is an almost perfect picture and barometer of our culture as a whole: fast, isolated, and unnatural.
Fast: We eat fast both in the obvious “fast food” phenomena that has come on the scene in recent years (historically speaking it is very recent) but also we gobble our food down quickly. Well most of us. At least me. We eat quickly so we can get on to more important tasks and sometimes we even multi-task while we eat. We eat while driving. We eat while watching TV. We eat while working or reading. It is rarely enough to ‘just eat.’ To savor a meal for the meal’s sake and deeply experience the pleasure of food. There are some allies out there tackling this problem in the slow food movement.
Isolated: We often eat alone. Drive-throughs. TV dinners. Hey, I’m guilty of going through the drive through and eating in my car en route to whatever is next more often than I care to admit. Eating at its best however is a social event, a time of being together. A time of celebration.
Unnatural: Many of us rarely even eat food. We eat things that are food-like. If its got more than one or two ingrediants listed on the label, it’s probably not even real food. Good advice is available on this topic in Michael Pollan’s writings.
So my advice and plan of action with regard to food is simple: slow down, never eat alone, and eat real food.
Shared meals have been a part of religious practice from the beginning. I have a particular fascination with the early Christian communities and the record of their life together in the book of Acts. They are eating together from the first pages of that book and if there’s something they do consistently throughout their early formation it was eating meals.
Acts 2
42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
So amidst the epic events of the coming of the Spirit and formation of the church what were the first followers of Jesus doing? Eating. Possibly the most mundane, universal thing that any of us could do. Something we do daily from birth till death. So what makes it so special and why would it become one of the 4 practices (alongside the more obvious and to me at least expected practices related to Scripture, prayer and fellowship) that were central to the life of the earliest Jesus community?
Jesus ate and he ate well, meaning he ate in a way that was life giving and inclusive. Jesus ate with his disciples and at the end of his taught to eat in a way that they could remember him, be mindful of him, include him even though he was physically absent.
So we can ask ourselves are we devoted to “the breaking of bread”? What would devotion to THAT even look like? Is it simply showing up at church each week and consuming tiny pieces of bread/crackers and an ounce of wine/juice? Perhaps that is it. But maybe there’s more as well…. what if the “Lord’s supper” really was meant to be a leisurely, shared meal that actually filled us up in every way. What might that look like?
*** What were some of your most special, memorable meals? What made them special and memorable?
These three community practices – morning prayer, shared meals, weekly sabbath – form the bass line of my life. I’d like to take each in turn and spend a little time exploring them more deeply for they are loaded with spiritually formative potential. Before looking at them in more in depth though I need to pan back a bit for the wider context.
if you know me at all you’ll know that I love Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. I place this book in my top three contemporary books and in the rare air of being among the masters of christian literature of all time alongside Bonhoeffer, Theresa of Avila, Thomas A’Kempis, Charles Wesley i.e. the heavy hitters and the Big Dogs. There was one major disappointment though. When I got to one of the final sections called “A Curriculum for Christlikeness” there wasn’t one. There was no curriculum. There were some guidelines, some parameters, some ‘must-haves’ but there was no clearly spelled out “this is what you need to do now” curriculum. I was disappointed because I like to be told what to do and then do it. I’d make a good dog. I can roll over for a treat. I can follow commands. I can do as I’m told. But Willard (wisely) refused to do this. In retrospect I’m glad he did because it taught me something very important…
There is no one, all encompassing “Curriculum for Christlikeness.” There are certainly ‘curriculums’ (note the obvious: little ‘c’ and plural). And in that there is much freedom and room for exploration. There is freedom to build one (of course within certain parameters) and there is room to explore what others have built. So we can look at Benedict’s rule for his monks and see a genius example of a curriculum (and an environment I might add) that has stood the test of 1500 years and counting. Or more recently one might look at Charles Wesley and see how he formed disciples and leaders to form and sustain an ecclesial and social movement.
So I am now pursuing what a curriculum would look like in this era, in my context (west Norwood, the Brownhouse). I will be drawing heavily on historical examples already noted within the broad and generous parameters that Willard laid out.
And I know already that these three practices (fixed hour prayer, shared meals, and sabbath keeping) will be major players… to be continued…
If you are seeing a picture in this space I have succeeded.
