Intentional Community Living
-Intentional
-Personal Decision
-believe on a calling and gifting
-carving time for sharing life
-Community
-not alone
-sharing resources
-giving to the community around us (Church and the world)
-incarnational mission
-Living
-being real
-living as a disciple
-learning
-being disciplined
-following the teachings of the gospel
-learning to be content
-living a simpler life
Some core values:
* Led by God - we acknowedge how frequently we substitute our own hopes, dreams, desires, and plans for God’s hopes and dreams. We have been intentional about moving slowly, studying scripture together, praying together, and seeking God’s guidance as a group. We value that process and want to keep that pace for major descisions.
* Community - not a church, bible study, or accountablity group, more then roommates. We seek to understand our faith, our theology, our purpose, and our actions from a communal point of view. Each of us speaks God’s words to each other, and it is in the sharing of words that we meet The Word.
* Hospitality - our orientation is focused on those outside our immediate family. We hope to a place where “the other” is welcomed and embraced.
* Incarnational Living - we seek to be the church, to be an example of God’s grace, in how we live, love, and share with others.
* Sharing - we seek to embrace the model of the church in Acts “That shared with each according to their need.” We seek to know the needs of our community (corprate and neighborhood) and to commit to meeting those needs together.
* Alternative - we want to present an alternative narative to the “American Dream” / “Suberban Dream” that many of us feel was taught to us.
* Gospel - we seek to be good news. We are not doing this driven by angst or frustration but also by excitement and joy. We seek to be good news in our neighborhood, good news to the neighborhood, and good news to the church universal.
* Food - we enjoy eating together. We want part of our idenity as a community to be centered around the table and around christ’s table.
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Yeah … I tried to write this a bunch of times. I never could get anywhere I liked, but at least this is something …
“Be Hospitable to one another without complaint.”
“Show preference to one another with honor”
”Be angry but do not sin”
We discussed the in’s and out’s of being roommates. Nate suggested that we put the needs of others before our own needs. He spoke of the importance of taking a premeditated approach to confronting conflict. Here is his suggestion:
Before you approach the person, get God involved. Pray. Then, if you feel you need to confront them, do the following:
First, identify your emotion. (i.e. I feel frustrated)
Next, identify your own need. (i.e. I need to have the kitchen clean when I come home.)
That way, when you approach the offending person, you can give them a chance to take action and correct the situation without making them defensive.
We talked also about not having a formula for fixing things, but being willing to learn and be flexible.
The idea was presented that we could have morning and evening prayer times. It would be a place to read and discuss but NOT PREACH. We could possibly do this at dinner time.
A few buisness items discussed:
Everyone needs to log in and register at the blog. We need to post ideas here and go over key thoughts in our next meeting.
We are going to start having volunteers to send the weekly email reminder and post the notes.
We will move the meetings to 8pm in order to accomidate several people’s schedules.
Lastly, let me appologize to the group for not having these posted until the last minute. Please forgive me for my lack of attention to this.
See you TONIGHT, Aug 31st at 8pm!