Community thoughts 1: Dialogue (Kind of)

The Scene: End of a normal youth meeting: people wandering about, jamming on the instruments, talking, avoiding the washing up. Resident Old Guy is stopped in his attempts to skulk off by an Enthusiastic young Person with all the energy of someone who has just finished all their exams and can sleep for the rest of the summer.

Enthusiastic Young Person (EYP): Hey! I wanted to ask you something...
Resident old guy (ROG): Really er... Great... What?
EYP: What you wrote on your blog about community and stuff... I'm past my exams and wondering what to do next, and I was wondering what you had in mind with this?
ROG: (This could be difficult) It depends on the people who come together and start the community...
EYP: That sounds like lots of people with long hair smoking funny mushrooms.
ROG: Definitely not. I look terrible with long hair.
EYP: So will does yours look like then?
ROG: Well, with New Monastic Communities, or Missional communities, call them what you will, it depends who comes and joins it.
EYP: So what's a monastic community?
ROG: Well, that depends...
EYP: This is starting to sound very Zen...
ROG: It won't look like normal 'church' because there is no 'one style to follow. That's the fun bit: . It's kind of organic so it is able to change and grow and alter to fit the people there, because people are different, and people come with different gifts, so anything is possible and instead of saying “We need people to fill this gap in that programme” we can say: What do you want to do?” The only real 'requirement' is that we are committed to love each other and the people around us, and...
(Realises he got carried away and everyone in the room is looking at him)
Anyway. There are some general things and a lot are in cities but some are very rural. Some are a sort of extension of one local church while some are independent, and work alongside several churches, and everyone attends a different one on Sunday.
EYP: Which are you starting?
ROG: Good question.
EYP: What's 'Community life' mean?
ROG: We'd have things like daily prayer...
EYP: Daily? Like, you mean, every day?
ROG: Yeah...
EYP: So what would that be like?
ROG: Depends who is running it that day. We'd take it in turns. That's part of the vision.
EYP: So... I'd be leading? How often?
ROG: Every couple of weeks probably.
EYP: (Realising this) Okaaaay... well what else?
ROG: Some communities have a fact sheet, which would give a good idea, but generally communities like this are formed of people trying to live simple lives, and not have so much stuff, to follow God and serve people around us, and encourage each other. The one we are looking to start would focus on the arts and on caring for creation, and within that we could do sorts of stuff, like starting a club for children, doing arts with people or going and working with the homeless wherever we can, or building a microbusiness, helping to fix old people's houses, Social Activism, you name it. We want to love people and serve them, basically to be Jesus to the people around us, while being us and all that he created... Sorry, was that too much?
EYP: Er...

(When our enthusiastic believer has recovered, we will continue with ideas for Kemnat... These may well change as we are not that good at hearing what God says... but we're trying our best)