Intentional community rule of life...

[Nate Myers]

Hello all,

My name is Nathan Myers. I'm presently a pastor of a rural Church of the Brethren congregation, but in May, my wife and I will be moving with a good friend (Dustin Miller, I think he's here on Common Root) and his wife and another fellow to Cincinnati, OH to form an intentional community. I'm interested in hearing from those working out their distinctives that give the community a sense of cohesiveness and mission; something along the lines of the Simple Way's onion. I've seen van Steenwyck's comments about reading with Missio Dei apprentices, which intrigues me as well.

What is your community's approach to a common rule of life? And what resources have you used to develop one?

If you have a document that illustrates the specifics, would you consider emailing it to me at [e-mail] . We just recognize as a group that we're not re-inventing the wheel and that it would be foolishness not to glean the deep wisdom of those practitioners of this way of living as deep insights for our approach.

Thanks in advance,
Nathan Myers
http://anothernathanmyers.com

[Eliacin Rosario-Cruz]

Hi Nate,

Thanks for starting this discussion. I think many of us involved/interested in communities are curious to learn from others on how to develop a rule of life, and the why's for it.

I am part of a small community in Seattle (mustard seed house) we've been defining what in the beginning was to be a rule of life and know it is a set of affirmations of life with common rhythms. The concept of a rule is too static for what seem to be a living community.

I am including here some links for some discernment process, thoughts and reflections from the mustard seed house and mustard seed associates. Hope this help. As a community we would be more than happy to be companions of you and your community in this journey.

Paz y esperanza,

Eliacin


http://eliacin.com/2008/10/08/discernment-at-the-mustard-seed-house/

http://msainfo.org/blog/why-a-rule-of-life-you-might-ask

http://eliacin.com/2008/10/03/becoming-community-on-community-disce...

http://msainfo.org/articles/a-meeting-for-discernment

http://msainfo.org/blog/more-on-msa-spiritual-discernment

http://msainfo.org/blog/more-on-msa-discernment-project-june-24

[Nate Myers]

Eliacin,

Thanks for the response and the helpful links. It'll be helpful for us to follow along with your reflections on your MSH discernment times as well.

As a sidenote, we're talking about a cross-country train trip in the month of May to visit some communities we're familiar with, and MSH has been bandied about as a possibility. I remember Andrew Jones commenting on his blog once that he visited an intentional community (in Cali, I think) and they insisted on him staying for a certain number of days so he could get a more authentic sense of who they were in the larger community. We'd like to limit the quantity of visits to maximize the quality of interaction in the spirit of Jones' encounter. Does that sound like a possibility with MSH?

Peace and hope to you.
Nathan

[Jamie Arpin-Ricci]

We are in the process of developing a rule of life for our intentional community here too. We've referenced MSH a lot in the process, but would be interested in hearing more about any other material you get. Our rule is being developed out of an Anabaptist/Franciscan blend.

Peace,
Jamie

[Chris Smith]

Hi Nate ---

We have long been resistant to articulating the specifics of our intentionality as a community in a sort of rule, recognizing the tendency that such rules have itoward become a shortcut around (often difficult) conversations of discernment that need to occur.

However, in the last few years, we have -- in conversation with a number of churches/intentional communities with an orientation toward radical discipleship -- put together a high-level covenant that we hope will serve to provide some form to the discernment of God's transforming mission in this place. You can read this covenant here:
http://www.englewoodcc.com/covenant.html

[Nate Myers]

Jamie,

Thanks. We will be drawing deeply on Anabaptist/Franciscan tradition moving forward as well

Chris,

Good to talk again! I was the one who dialogued with you about writing a paper on Englewood. Thanks for the response. I'll show it to the other folks preparing to covenant with my wife and myself.

Nate

[Chris Smith]

Dang! I thought your name looked familiar, but couldn't exactly place it... sorry...
Guess I'm getting old and losing my memory...

I'll have to come over and visit you sometime once you're settled in Cinti... It's not that far away.
And likewise you should come for a visit here sometime.

If you haven't already, you'll want to look up my dear friend Kevin Rains and the Vineyard Central community in the Norwood neighborhood of Cinti. Incidently, he has been laboring for quite some time writing a rule for their community.

[Nate Myers]

Hey, that's quite all right. I forget names all the time...and we hadn't talked for awhile.

I would love to get together sometime and hear some Englewood stories; hear the process and the continued messiness as well as what is emerging from your work together. After I followed your link, it brought me back to how interested I was in the Englewood story. It shaped a bunch of my thoughts, and all this before I knew that God could call people to relocate to abandoned places and serve the kingdom there. God has a way of leading me down pathways that (if my eyes and ears are open) radically change my perspectives and dreams.

We visited Cincy this week to look at houses, etc and stopped by Vineyard Central to see if anyone was around. The building was locked, and I didn't feel gutsy enough to stop by Kevin's house and say Hi. We're going to investigate seeing if we can connect with Vineyard Central more fully once we get settled in May.

[Chris Smith]

What neighborhood are you looking at settling into in Cinti?

Get in touch with me once you're settled in Cinti. You can send me a message here or email me at douloschristou [ a t ] g m a i l [ d o t ] c o m

[Nate Myers]

We're presently possibly considering a house at 2440 Maplewood, which would keep us close to Over the Rhine for work there. We're also looking at a place on W. McMicken Ave there as a possible center for urban gardening, but things are up in the air right now. Some of it will shake down over the next couple of weeks.

[Dave Huth]

Hello,

You also may want to look up the good folks at the Walnut Hills Fellowship:
http://thewalnuthillsfellowship.org/?page_id=4

Those people are rad!

Good luck on your adventure,

Dave

[Nate Myers]

Wow, they're really close to the Maplewood House! Maybe we'll try to start a bidding war with Vineyard Central and Walnut Hills for our time and energy. It's the American way! haha. Just kidding. I had heard of Bart Campolo, but didn't put two and two together.

[Brandon Rhodes]

Google "missional order" for a good starting place for where my neighborhood church community got some inspiration.

Rather than jumping right in, we started a core group of people sharing their life stories and talking extensively about the pertinent topics. Eventually we all chose books to read (Hirsch, Frost, Claiborne, St Benedict, etc.) and staggered book report conversations every week. Then we all started writing our own visions for what a community covenant would look like, and some compiler/editors fused together the best visions of all of them into one approximate document that we all then read and prayed over for a couple weeks... All that culminated in a covenant-crafting weekend retreat where we revised and produced a "beta" covenant for us to follow for one trial year together, with a review of it at the three, six, and nine month marks. We're about at the first review right now.