Revisiting: Christian Hippies, a year later

I've avoided blogging recently--whether it's because I'm afraid of who's looking now or once I'm out of habit--I get further and further from being able to form my words into concise entries.....well for my own good, I need to keep this going.

I've waited a week on this one--not my style.

Last week I went to visit some of my New Monastic friends in Louisiana. I had sent them my final paper about a month before. It was a wonderful time to connect not only with good friends who are dealing with the same questions as mine--but also to see some reflections off of what I'd found over my year of studying the movement.

A year is a long time, I found. The community's had some difficult times--but when I think about my past year--well my life hasn't been all roses either. What they pointed out to me as they "aired their dirt"--this isn't how the church works. I have to agree. How often do we as church people sweep the difficult things under the rug and choose instead to talk about pleasant things? What about church politics? difficulties? These are also ignored. It's such a shame....often God's power is best seen in these messy situations--our depravity mixed with the awesome-ness of an almighty God makes for....well good news that needs to be shared.


Also, we got to discuss some of my conclusions of my research--one main criticism I continue to come up against is the closed nature of the New Monastic movement towards those who are potentially interested in joining in similar community work. There are many reasons for this--dealing with the 'fans" takes away from time spent in the neighborhood, and many communities that leave the institutional church in order to do their community work (some would say they've left the institutional church to show the rest of us how to be the church).
However, it was great to be able to discuss how we--as fellow venturers within this moving of the Holy spirit might better help those who are potentially interested in joining in community life and ventures find their way. For some of us this might mean remaining in churches that we otherwise would not in order to let ourselves be used there--for others this could be finding ways to incorporate volunteers on a more scheduled basis. But it's about providing the first stepping stone for people.

It's exciting to see how even our topic of conversations evolved over the time of the year--we're discussing different things now as we live out this "thing" together.