Living Community Pt2

After the decisions were made to live our lives as shared ones with other believers and so be able to impact the world around us more effectively we embarked on a whirlwind of house moves, new towns and cities and mission, all so we could try out ways of living a shared life. Some were more successful than others.

Our small family home was often bursting at the seams with Students from the local uni, or some guy we had met on the streets the night before, slightly intoxicated or heavily under the influence of some substance or other.

Looking back we probably appeared a little foolish to some of the folks from  the local Church groups that we had attached ourselves to, especially as we had six small children of our own.
When we told folk that the morning after we had provided hospitality to some waif or stray and that some of our household goods had gone missing you could almost hear their thoughts of " well what did you expect?"

Interestingly we continued to bump into groups from the Jesus Army/New Creation Christian Community during our adventures, we felt that we were on a parallel path and received much encouragement from them.

It was a struggle to find other Christians to share our enthusiasm for the common life but as time went on a little band formed, eight or so adults, some who moved in with us and others who lived close by.
The excitement and enthusiasm was there but if I am to be honest we didn't have much of a clue as to what we were doing.
Nevertheless we muddled through and as we are all still on speaking terms today I would say we survived the experience.

As time moved on we decided that we wanted to be part of something bigger and slightly more organised. So eventually we all in one way or another joined ourselves to the Jesus Army / New creation Christian Community (NCCC), those radical, inspiring people that had triggered things off for me many years earlier.

The intent of these posts is not to meant to be an analysis of that experience, especially as NCCC is itself going through a reshaping and re-envisioning time but to look at whether big organised community is actually "Living Community" or if there really are ways of Living community without actually living in the same property, as a large organised group? (the reason I ask this question is that the community life of the Church is often spoken of and claimed to be active but  often not very visible or even very tangible, the talk doesn't match the walk, from our experience)
Or is something more organic  whats needed at this time?
And if it's possible what are the pitfalls, what are the advantages?

Just to finish this post I would like to go back to those early days, times when our home was bursting at the seams with students from the local Uni.
Both my wife and I feel that this was a successful part of the journey, we were able to provide a warm caring environment for many young Christian men and women who were away from family, some quite a distance for probably the first time, who although looking forward to some freedom also longed for the security of family and home. We feel privileged to have been able to be Mum and Dad to these young lives, as well as ourselves and our children benefiting from their friendship and the big contribution they made to the kingdom life as we shared the ups and downs of daily living.

So this post was a little bit of a blast into the past, but I felt it important to lay a foundation, albeit briefly, that we're not without experience on the subject of community life, nor shall I be talking out of the proverbial armpit on the subject. (That is a matter of opinion of course)

Coming up... Is the shared life the normal Christian life or is it a gospel add on?
Who's doing it and is it working?
How do you measure success?