For many years, we struggled to answer important questions about what defined us as a collective group. These are the problems of an organic and leaderless community. As individuals within a group, what do we all hold in common? What is the larger scope of what we are doing together?
We stayed away from declarations of faith or mission or vision statements because at the end of the day, who is the “we” we are talking about? If that we isn’t truly reflective of the we it is talking about, it’s only wishful thinking. Sometimes the we is just the person writing up the vision.
For us, we discovered the “we” we most often talked about wasn’t really our community — at least not as it is in reality. It was a projection of what we wanted it to be. It was the idealized version of our community in the mind of the speaker, at that specific moment in time, in that specific context of conversation. Imagine how confusing it was to hear so many different versions of who we were, listening honestly to that feedback and trying to get a real sense of identity!
The solution to this problem was to talk more honestly about own our individual points of view. This took courage, trust, greater sensitivity and self-awareness, and years to practice until we felt like it was part of our culture. We stopped talking about our community like it was a third person, out there somewhere, and we started to noticed themes and patterns in our relational network that created a realistic sense of who we are together. Could we identify those themes and patterns and articulate them in ways that resonate with everyone in our community?
To truly be representative of who we are together, the naming our values became a task for everyone.
We wanted more than a decorative statement to hang up on the wall. We wanted something to accurately represent the DNA of our group and help us chart our way forward. In early 2011, enough of us felt like we had become something we were ready to name. Living together had established some shared values that were guiding our decisions. We had confidence in this as a reality and believed we were ready to do the work to say out loud who we really are.
After a year of discussing, re-discussing, defining what values actually are, along with establishing an economy of value as a framework from which to decipher what is truly valuable to us, we had an answer to the question of what are we doing together. Sometime in 2012, everything came together in the simple metaphor of color wheel.
The idea is that everyone is creating a beautiful painting together. But each one is unique because each of us is unique. The paintings are our lives. The goal is to create the most beautiful masterpiece we can that reflects the glory of our Maker. The substance we share as we strive to live together in community, are the same raw and basic resources. We are all starting with the same colors to create artwork out of our lives. The results reveal both our diversity and our unity.
Hence our color wheel of values was born.
ONENESS
As the kind of oneness Jesus experiences with the Father and longs for all of his followers to also experience (John 17:21), we seek to be one in the Spirit, mutually embracing and transcending the diversity of our individual perspectives.
FAMILY
We are committed to one another because of God’s commitment to us. Our community is one of relational connections. We have different roles and relationships to each other like Cousin, Uncle, Father, Mother, Sister rather than titles or positions over one another.
AUTHENTICITY
The truth, honesty, the ability to be oneself without shame or fear or judgment. This is the gateway to self-awareness and access point to our heart.
GROWTH
If something isn’t growing, it’s dead. Growth is what all living things do — especially people who are alive to God. The purpose for why we gather together is to cultivate and allow spiritual growth to happen.
DISCIPLESHIP
The acknowledgment that we are all students learning from Jesus, our teacher, our source of life and knowledge. We are on a path to become more like him in character, word, and deed.
REDEMPTION
Good things grow in the wake of service and love. If God is at work, you can’t stop the redemption of the world around you. If we pursue these what these values embody, we won’t be able to stop it either. The goal is to simply and fully participate in it.
Each of these values mix together for a more vibrant understanding of our life together. Just like you can’t have green without blue and yellow, if you have discipleship and authenticity, you can’t stop growth. You will get some form of redemption when oneness and discipleship are present. And you will always have a family when authenticity and oneness are pursued together.
With the Holy Spirit as your inspiration, what kind of artwork will you create?
We are a group of families striving to live an authentic faith free from artificial social constructs. We do not go to church, rather, we are the church. For 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we struggle with and how to grow in this reality. We are Liquid.