Our Mission (what on earth are we doing?)

I hate it when I think I have a good idea and then when I share it with someone they shoot it down either by lack of enthusiasm or by asking me questions regarding details that I haven't yet thought through. I'll never forget the first time Beth and I talked about missional community. We were driving home from some event and she began sharing about people living together to create a better society and planet through the message of Christ's redeeming love. She was pretty jazzed about her idea and I hate to admit it, but I totally tried to shut it down. Two different families living in the same house!? Four families committing to living in the same neighborhood for 10 years?! Sharing each other's stuff?! Sharing each other's money and resources?! That's appalling crazy talk. Fortunately, Bethany was not afraid of my questions and completely embraced them even though my ulterior motive was to shut out her insane idea. She, in true gracious form, thanked me for challenging her with all my questions and I was left with an idea, a seed, planted in the back of my brain. Little did I know that that specific conversation would be one among many that would begin to stir a fascination with this idea of what it looked like for the Church to live in true, Christ-centered Community.

Fast forward four years. Here we both are, college grads, Masters in hand, two years of teaching under our belts, 25 and still single. We have taken our college education that focused on service and community and have begun to apply it to the real world. Let us just say right now that we don't really like the real world. It is full of broken systems designed by broken people who tend to break each other more. For both of us that has meant seeing that though we have the best intentions and hopes for our students, we fight against habits and thought patterns that are far from the way God intended the world to run. Where am I going with this?

We believe that God intended and designed much, much more for the human race than we are currently living into. As we have faced the brokenness, God has begun to dream in us how He could heal our fallenness if we claimed the power we have in Him through Jesus.

In college we both read a book called Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne who tells some pretty incredible stories of communities coming together to radically love like Jesus loved. We were both inspired and in awe and itching to get out into the "real world" and do the same. This has not been as glorious or easy a task as it seemed at the outset. For real, its been hard work. However, after three years of working, learning, and attempting to be adults, we decided that we weren't gonna let the man get us down. We'd seen the problems and it increased our conviction that it was going to be through community coming together, loving Jesus, loving each other, and loving others that would open the way for God to bring healing to our brokenness.

So what on earth are we doing? Well, at the end of Claiborne's book was a list of "missional communities" that were also intentionally living the love of Jesus to their surrounding communities. We decided what better way to learn about the community we want than to visit them and experience life with those who are already doing it? So we're going. Yup. (and now its late so Beth is strongly encouraging me to stop editing and turn off the light so we can both go to sleep...and I have to say that I strongly agree.)

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