Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Reflections on the last 3 years

This fall will mark three years since Kate and I followed what we sensed was the nudge of God into the unknown.

We felt a call to create spiritual community for those not comfortable in church. We sensed that the greatest gifts the church had to offer those outside the doors was community and spiritual practices. So we walked outside the church doors and went exploring.


Before we tried to do anything, we wanted to listen and learn.
So for three months we interviewed leaders and innovators. We observed young adults worshiping and finding meaning.


We got up at dawn to sing love chants to God and do yoga with some young spiritual leaders in Santa Fe.
We sprawled on the floor of the Episcopal cathedral in Seattle along with hundreds (yes. hundreds) of young adults.
More than 500 people packed the pews and floor on a rainy, dark, Sunday evening for sung compline.


We passed wonder bread and grape juice communion with members of an intentional art and social justice community in the Mission District of San Francisco.


We visited a church with punk/funk/trance worship music, a church that met in a bar, another church that met in a Jazz club, others that worked with lay-led worship planning groups to create wildly creative experiential worship services each week.


We interviewed church planters, bloggers, priests, ministers, college chaplains, professors of social change, and a seminary professor who has studied young adults and congregational development.


Some of that journey we chronicled here on this blog. Since then we returned to Tucson, tried some experiments, met new friends,
and were part of forming an ecumenical, intentional community.
We've lived in community for the last 16 months.


Three years seems a good amount of time to step back a bit and do some reflecting. Over the next few months Kate and I will use this space to reflect on what we've experienced, learned, and the questions that we are living with now.

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