Introduction
What situation do you want to spend our life in? What people do you want to have around? What do you want to do as your long term main activity? Here is mine variant. Living with some fellows as a permanent, mobile, technology-enabled, intentional community … serving God by serving others … and searching God by seaching what he does today. I cannot imagine something better, something more comforting, something more stirring. Standing there, one day, dear friends around you, and knowing you’ve found what you was searching all life long: the sense of this all, in an obvious, non-ignorable way. Knowing, from then on, that you’re moving to an eternity on God’s side. Instead of just being convinced to do so.
Of course, I would prefer joining an existing community of that style, instead of building my own. Because building an organisation is a hard, risky and tedious task – and without any worth of the desired organisation already exists. However, I did an intensive web research on 2007-11-17, and found nothing. What I found is this, by appropriateness:
- Mobile Freak Gemeinde (MFG): in English, that’s “mobile freak church”; they’re a group of some Jesus Freaks, living in camp buses and touring the world to tell people about Jesus; they are currently “on hold” (see post “Pause” from 2007-08-12). I really hope that you find a way to continue your vision, guys! You really rock! While they’re closest to the community I have in mind and I’d really like to meet them, they’re a group of personal friends and, as said, on hold. Not to mention our small differences in lifestyle … really, don’t want to mention 😉
- White Stone Community: written about on this blog of its founder Baba, they’re a really stylish Jesus Freak community in Portugal and somewhat connected to MFG. Sadly, they seem to have quite high fluctuation and are not mobile … that is, they differ from the style of community I search, but again, you guys rock, too, and I’d like to meet you some day.
- Rainbox Gatherings: this seems quite a fascinating thing, yet I do not know why I include them here as I search for a small, permanent intentional community.
- Christian Peacemaker Teams: they have a nice, consequently radical style and are Christian, but I do not share (1) their occupation with peacemaking, (2) the a priori opposition to any kind of violence, (3) their centrally controlled organisation style, (4) their dependence on fundraising, (5) their strong anti-Israeli mindset.
So … if anybody can point me to an existing group to join, I would be grateful beyond measure. But if no such group exists yet, I would be willing to start one – else I cannot expect to experience any kind of teamwork and communal living in this work that I can totally enjoy. I assume now that I indeed need to start one such community … I made good experiences with using fictional content to envision stuff, drawing a lively, motivating and self-motivating image in my and other people’s minds. To have a vision is, after all, viewing something worthy to endure pain for, so some more motivation will not hurt. I should note that this vision also expresses my wish to live an interesting, well-going life … hope God will bless me with that, not sure.
The vision
Hi … I’m Tam of Cmando. My wife Celina and six other fellows are also of Cmando. Pronounce it as “come-and-do”, with the empasis on the latter. I don’t know what Cmando is. Cmando is an intentional community of eight people … a Christian church of eight … your permanent world tour with 7 friends … a bunch of journalists and metaphysicists, tracing miracles … a multi-party house with couples and singles in it … an all-wheel truck … a company of eight friends in ever-ongoing financial trouble. Some people see us as a civil analogy to military commando, which sometimes applies, sometimes not at all.
Celina reminds me jus’ now that Cmando is rather just a permanent group of long-term friends … a set of lively discussions every evening (and mostly helpful) … these windows with their ever-changing exceptional view on untouched nature … a collection of complicated computer stuff that you never want in your living room (but sadly we have just one room in total, so it looks like ISS interieur) … a group that wants to be able to help whereever we see it fit … a network of contacts to several thousand helpful and needy people worldwide … a particularly challenging time last year (socially, as friendship is not always a box of chocolates). And so on 🙂
But, don’t worry what we are. Instead, read what way we lived today … it easier to get precise on that topic. Well then, step by step. We are currently to an expedition in Tanzania, trying to track some of the concrete things God does today. When we’re done with that, this will be published as our third (and last) book on that topic, and we’re glad to find such a wealth of incidences that even Matew seems to be happy with that.
However, we’re not doin that stuff all day long, as we need to earn some money to live and travel here, and as we try to help some fellow Christians on the go. Therefore, this morning was dedicated to our community-owned little IT company … standing up at 5 o’clock, we’d have our running course, but with me and Celina staying at the truck for security reasons. Well, and to prepare a nice breakfast 🙂 After breakfast, our four programmers would settle behind their computers and finish one of their website projects, working in something they call extreme collaboration in a warroom environment; I’d say it’s related to
XPM.
Celina and Rebeca assisted them by doing accounting and office administration, while Rhett and I took the motorbike with sidecar to visit some local market and buy food for all of us, to prepare the food for storage, together with us, and to create a
nice meal. When we arrived back home at the truck, they were in the midst of deploying their website via Inmarsat satellite internet connection, while the girls were ready. After eating together and relaxing during the hottest part of the day, we mobilized the vehicle and departed … but paused a little while after to take in some water from a public well (whereof a location based GPS reminder had made us known).
After two hours of driving (and only 45km of distance …) we arrived at this little village of Adjoa. He was a fellow Christian whom we had met the week before, and we had promised to come and try to repair their village’s jammed well (which was a result of a tribal feud two years ago). Arriving there in late afternoon, we were heartily welcomed by Adjoa and the village elders. We were invited to an evening meal and discussed the problem with them for a while, then joined Adjoa and others in their evening prayer meeting. And finallly we sat outside at a small camp fire, discussing among Cmando members how to dig this well up again. We were kind of in a mess, as this was a 20m deep hole in the ground, 35cm in diameter, and we did not have any kind of well drilling equipment. Finally, Brady had the idea to mount our small-outline air hammer together with ballast and this high-volume fan (for removing stones and dirt) to a steel cable. And we decided to try that the other day.
End notes
Interesting enough, God’s vision for the whole Christian congregation is quite similar to the vision above. Just that I dare to envision this for a small, prototype group only, while God dares to envision that for all of us. Nonetheless, I am impressed how Paul expresses the way God envisions congregations to be … full of love, saring, honesty, mercy … and full of venturesome, faithful co-workers:
(1) Does Christ speak to you? Does love call to you? Do you have a part in the Holy Spirit? Do you have any love and care for others? (2) Then make me very, very happy. Live in happiness with one another. Have the same love for each other. Think the same way. Agree together about things. All have one purpose in mind. (3) Do not try to prove you are better than others. Do not be proud of yourselves, but be humble. Think of other people as being better than yourselves. (4) Each one of you should not think only about himself, but about other people also. (5) Think the same way Jesus Christ thought. (6) He was in every way like God. Yet he did not think that being equal to God was something he must hold on to. (7) He gave this up and became a servant. […] (13) For God is at work in you. He helps you want to do it. And he helps you do what he wants you to do. (14) Do everything without grumbling or making trouble. (15) In that way you will be completely good. No one will be able to say anything wrong about you. You will be God’s good children living amongst bad people. Among them you will shine like lights in the world. […] (19) I hope the Lord Jesus will let me send Timothy to you soon. I will be glad to hear about you. (20) I have no one like Timothy. He is troubled to know about you. (21) All the other people think only of themselves and not of Jesus Christ. (22) But you know what a good man Timothy is. You know that he has worked with me in telling the good news. He has worked just as a son works with his father. […] (25) I thought I must send Epaphroditus, our Christian brother, back to you. He has worked with me and has also been a soldier of Christ with me. He was your messenger and he brought your gift for my needs. (26) I am sending him back because he has been lonely without you all. And his heart has been troubled because you heard that he was sick. (27) He was very sick! He almost died! But God was kind to him. He was not only kind to him, but also to me. God did not let me have one trouble after another. (28) I want even more to send him to you so that you will be happy when you see him again. And I will not be so troubled any more. (29) So receive him with much joy because he is a Christian brother. Give respect to men like him. (30) He almost died doing the work of Christ. You wished to help me, but you could not come. He came instead. He was willing to put his life in danger in order to help me. [Philippians 2:1-7,13-15,19-22,25-30 BWE]
Image source: they are used for illustration purposes only and are completely unrelated to the content of this completely fictional story. They are licensed under a Creative Commons license, published by user “simontaylor” on flickr.com as images 286272346, 286269549 (in this order).
Start date: 2007-11-17
Post date: 2007-11-19
Version date: 2007-11-19 (for last meaningful change)
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