Many people feel disillusioned with their experience of church and are still looking, hoping, dreaming of something different. This was us. But we never found what we were looking for until we started to build it ourselves.
If you are looking for honest stories about the mess of living together in community, you’re in the right spot. We’re happy you are here – not to convince you of or even teach you anything, but just to connect. Grab a coffee, stay awhile and introduce yourself sometime. We’re kinda like AA for those still in or formerly in professional ministry.
This site is our way of saying you are not alone.
Think of it as an ongoing conversation about our experience. Join in as much or as little as you want. Take anything that’s helpful to you and leave the rest. And as you do engage, please remember to always be kind.
Here’s a brief synopsis of the major mile markers on our journey thus far.
In the beginning, we were a church with no name because we don’t go to church, we are the church.
We’ve always been a network of relationships and have identified a reliable pattern for community integration.
We tend to move slow because we want our we to really mean everybody in our community, but when we do, it’s always with intention and purpose.
We’ve developed an imaginative way to express our core values.
We’ve worked through a common understanding of leadership and instituted a rotating circle of community elders.
We are learning to better listen to our neighbors so we may help them in the fight for justice today and tomorrow.
Currently, we are learning to hear and discern the voice of God together as a group.
To help you navigate through the site, below is a list of each section and how posts are categorized.
- key principles: the lessons we’ve learned through experience, blood, sweat, tears and, most often, our own mistakes
- core structure: the functional elements which keep our community alive and breathing
- stories & legends: a mostly accurate record of important moments and events from our shared history
- relearning relationships: as a messy network of relationships, our community needs to constantly learn and relearn healthy patterns
- spiritual practice: methods focused on inner personal practice to help answer the question, what do you need to grow
- individual voices: far from speaking for our community, these are individual perspectives of insight, wisdom, doubt and faith learned within our community
- engaging the world: outward focused ways to be present with those suffering in the world and continue to offer grace, hope, joy and love
- cloud of unknowing: these are the attempts we make to shine light into the darkness & courageously explore the not yet known within the painfully incomplete process of deconstruction & reconstruction