Imagine What We Could Become …
admin September 1st, 2008
… making fewer demands on the planet, building more meaningful lives and having the time and resources to serve others are primary goals of Christian simple living.
But to make a real difference in the Twentyfirst Century living simply requires a community of people in close proximity working together to create a more responsible community. We know that it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to live sustainably and serve others. The membership of many urban and suburban congregations are geographically dispersed, sometimes having long commutes just to get to the church building or visit each other. This makes it difficult to have the day-to-day community necessary to support each other’s efforts, reduce reliance on transportation, share and barter equipment and materials regularly and so forth. So many of us are left to go it alone – a real shame since congregations have tremendous potential to change the world, if we could just change our organizational model and shift our missions and goals just a bit. But Imagine …
…what could happen if one or two urban or suburban congregations decided to take seriously their mission to live and work together as a physical Christian community enabling them live simply and reach out to the needs of others. They might create a new geographically integrated community in which:
- What was important was not their jobs, incomes, houses, and reputations, but building their community, enriching their lives and relationships as well as their ability to reach out to those who needed their help;
- Members lived within walking/biking distance of each other, the church meeting house, and their jobs, thus reducing pollution and resource degradation while improving their health;
- They shared resources such as vehicles/transportation, appliances, tools, and their skills and labor;
- Families didn’t need to have 2 fulltime incomes because they didn’t engage in a consumer lifestyle, buying unnecessary stuff and throwing away much of what they had.
- They therefore needed less money than the average consumer and thus had more time to be with their families, support their church and community, and work in the congregation’s service projects and ministries;
- They made the community affordable for people of all income levels. Even in the midst of urban consumer culture, they created their own steady-state micro economy by providing low cost basic services for each other such as preventive health care, education, elder care, professional services, local food production, real estate, financial services, etc., through voluntarism and by adopting alternative service and financing arrangements for their community.
Imagine that over time they:
- Created a meeting house that served as their community center for religious functions as well as daily living activities, and which over the years, eventually housed not only space for worship and Christian education,
- but also … A small high quality K-12 school run not only by professionals but also by a cadre of volunteers, thus charging a tuition low enough that everyone could afford it;
- Home and community-based support services for their elders enabling them to continue living in the community or with their families instead of having to live in assisted living and nursing facilities.
- In addition they operated a senior drop-in and activities center.
All these services were staffed by volunteers including students as well as professionals;
- A restaurant serving seniors, kids, and the local community, again run by volunteers (elders, empty-nesters, kids, and ‘sandwich generation’ adults) and a small paid staff;
- Offered alternative financial planning and counseling, responsible investing, home re-location and real estate services, and local job finding services to support more congregation members in moving into the local community and finding employment consistent with their values;
- Space for community meeting and recreation functions;
- An equipment loan/barter service;
- Consulting services and support groups for green living;
- bartering for repair and up-keep of homes, vehicles, etc.
- Alternative, low cost preventive health care services, rehab and perhaps clinical services based in part on barter and volunteer services.
- Created a local farming and food production system to ensure that the community had healthy organic, locally-grown foods all year round which:
- Utilized a network of local Community Supported Agriculture farms and other local organic farmers including member and non-member farms;
- Managed a small volunteer/user-run food processing plant for freezing and canning local produce so they were able to eat high quality, local food all year;
- Operated a meal preparation facility to make meal preparation more time- and cost-efficient (similar to the new Dream Dinners or Super Suppers stores) using the locally grown and processed food;
- Supplied the restaurant (see above) with healthy locally grown food.
Impossible? Unrealistic?
It’s entirely do-able, given time and a critical mass of congregation members with the desire and a plan. In fact many congregation already have the seeds to begin. Such a community would be self-supporting and sustainable. It would offer both paid and volunteer jobs, providing many of the services families need at well below market prices, and all operating outside of the conventional economic system. It works, not because it has to make a profit and keep shareholders happy, but because the Church community wants and needs it, and because it is a key part of their faith and practice. A key difference between this and various other Christian communities in the past and a few still in existence today, is that a community such as this is geared toward using an existing urban/suburban infrastructure (houses, apartment buildings, church buildings, transportation, jobs, etc.) and bases it’s structure and practice on Twentyfirst Century conventional family and community norms. It doesn’t attempt to be monastic, exclusive, or driven by a single tightly focused mission, but rather would be sufficiently diverse in its activities, incomes, and interests that it could be nearly, if not completely self-sustaining. Rural communities such as the Hutterite communities have done this, sometimes with great success, but it may be time to make it work in urban America as well.