This weekend, we had our sixth Sabbath retreat in the redwood forest around Mt. Hermon. Our community started the process back in December with the hopes of coming (stumbling?) to a place where we would be able to commit to a common set of practices that will help shape us in the way of Jesus. This weekend many of us made that commitment for the next year.

Took a vow to pursue a way of life that is led by the Spirit and characterized by love. We committed to doing this by pursing these rhythms in our daily lives (my paraphrase):

We desire to love the creator and His creation by following the way of Jesus and helping others to discover life in the way.

Community: Knowing and loving God and others cannot be done alone.
Service: We collaborate with our creator in loving creation.
Creativity: We seek to leverage our imaginations in exploring the story of God’s kingdom and subverting the royal consciousness.  
Simplicity: We seek to live in the love and generosity of our creator within an empire of greed and scarcity. 
Obedience: Together we submit to the Son of the Living God.
Prayer: We pursue the guidance of the Spirit by centering ourselves in the presence of our creator.

Alice and I made this commitment together. We were both a little anxious about how it will play out over the coming year as we build a life together but we both felt like we have learned a lot from the "dojo" process so far and trust that the shaping and forming will continue.

Tags: monasticism, vows, community, simplicity, service, prayer

Here is a more complete listing of the six rhythms:

COMMUNITY: We cannot know or love God apart from knowing and loving one another. Through his life and words Jesus teaches how to love one another and seek reconciliation with all people. We are committed to taking the journey of faith in solidarity with one another and our brother’s and sisters around the world.

SERVICE: We are made to collaborate with our maker in caring for creation. We recognize the sacredness of work and use the capacities of our minds and bodies to serve others according to our talents, skills and the needs of the place where we find ourselves.

CREATIVITY: We seek to be awakened in our imaginations and actions, inspired by the epic story of God’s kingdom and creation, and connected to our cultural context. We want to live artfully, taking risks, experimenting and using the language and mediums of our culture to explore the story of God’s
kingdom together.

SIMPLICITY: We acknowledge the abundant provision of our maker, and seek to live in trust, radical contentment and generosity in an empire of greed and scarcity.

OBEDIENCE: We recognize Jesus as our teacher and authority, and wrestle with how to surrender to the way of love in every detail of our lives. We submit ourselves to one another in love and strive to keep our vows to God and our commitments to one another.

PRAYER: We seek the fruitfulness and guidance of the Spirit that comes from being centered and surrendered to the will and presence of our creator. We practice rhythms of prayer, silence and solitude that help us remain open to the voice and power of the Spirit.

Gentry pointed me to a blog that Gordon Cosby (the founder of the Church of the Savior in DC) will be contributing to.  The blog is called inward/outward. Gordon’s first post, titled "Becoming the Authentic Church" can be found here.

Although I’ve never met Gordon or been to the church of the savior, I feel a kindred spirit connection and find inspiration from what I know about Gordon and his approach to church and following Jesus (see some previous comments here). In particular, his sense about the role of our culture pulling us in directions that God did not intend really resonates with me. Gordon touches on this a little in his first post:

What I imagine is a revitalized and committed people who take Jesus seriously, joining a movement that is already underway, a movement toward recovery from the culture’s addictive pull, a healing movement that lifts up all who touch our life together.

I was first exposed to these ideas by a missions pastor here in the Bay Area. I believe that the local pastor I connected with was drawing from the work that the Church of the Savior has been doing in DC to integrate new members in their community.  I’m looking forward to hearing more from Gordon on the web. Thanks Gentry.

Tags: Gordon Cosby, church, faith, church of the savior

I had to opportunity to join the peer learning community that ReImagine hosted in San Francisco. It is described as a group of leaders (thought leaders, those exploring spritual leadership, and people leading with their lives in various vocations who also have a heart for guiding other spiritually). It was a great opportunity to connect with different people who are struggling with what it means to follow Jesus in their context.

I got to meet a gentleman from the East Bay who is moving on from a career as an oil spill responder for the coast guard. He shared some of his experiences in trying to start a community center/coffee shop in his area. I also got to reconnect with Bob and hear some stories about his background and the job he is starting on Monday. Bob had some great thoughts to share about culture, the cluetrain, emerging trends in marketing, ministry and his efforts to pay for college for his daughter. I really enjoy connecting with him.

I also got to hear some of the stories, struggles, and progress of some of the other folks in the group. In our breakout group of 8 or so there were a few folks that were grappling with a call to be in ministry but finding it hard to live that out in the traditional church. A few mentioned that they were longing for ways to support their families while seeking their call that didn’t mean being on the pay role at a church. I found this encouraging since I’ve been finding myself on a journey to free up more time to seek my call while also keeping my technology vocation in some form. We all seem to have a deep longing for an integrated or more holistic life– a life where the different compartments of our world begin to bleed together.

I’m looking forward to learning from this group of people. I’m not sure what will come of it, but I was definitely sensing the energy to encourage, learn, and share with each other.

Tags: reimagine, emergent, spirituality, holistic

So I came out as a Neo orthodox from the what is your theological worldview quiz. Hmm… Neo orthodox… does that include space for a neo generous orthodoxy to include my emergent side? I found it on Mark Fletcher’s blog.

Give it a shot.

It is fascinating to me that some of the things that have been happening in my discipline (computer science) also seem to be happening to the church. Andrew referenced this in his blog today. My first exposure to some of the background to what was happening (both in software and in the culture at large) first came from ESR’s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Eric first wrote the book “online” before it was later printed and published. This is something that perhaps some of the emergent authors should explore– first putting their thoughts, ideas, and theology online before or while publishing it. This might nurture, for good or bad, some of the decentralized contribution that has benefited software in the opensource movement. Some of this is clearly happening now through blogs and other online media but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it was applied to more formal and typically more lengthy collections of thoughts such as books.

Perhaps those working/assisting/struggling with the emerging church (and the context) could learn something from what has happened with software and the opensource movement. A good place to start would be the The Cathedral and the Bazaar and some of the related writings and critiques that ESR has compiled on the same site. We might learn something about spiritual formation from the hacker culture too.