Chapter 1 Part 3

Building a Community

Fired by the vision of speaking a wondrous gospel through all the land, Gordon came home to begin The Church of The Saviour. He and Mary, together with Elizabeth-Anne, Mary's sister, who was in training at Garfield Hospital in Washington, D.C., began holding an evening vespers service for the nurses-one of their flat efforts to let others know that they were "a church."

The School of Christian Living opened with one student, a slow, conservative and unlettered lad whom they had known in Madison Heights, Virginia. Billy had no idea of what he was getting into when he moved to the Washington area and looked up his old friends. Ernest Campbcll, at that time the minister of a church in Alexandria, made the living room of his house available as a classroom. For six months Gordon met with Billy to teach him doctrine, Christian growth, and Bible, meantime they struggled to determine what gift he might exercise on behalf of the new church. At long last they enthusiastically decided that it was running the mimeograph machine. Thereafter Gordon taught him as they worked together on mimeographing. When the year was over Billy was transferred by his employer to Iowa, leaving Gordon to wonder whether that first tone recruit might not have effected his own transfer in order to be free of involvement in an enterprise that was always slightly bewildering. In any case, Billy's departure did not lessen the ardor of his instructor, who remained firmly convinced that the school, or "little seminary," was essential training ground if the church was to have an inward life and move with any force in the world.

That year with Billy was in its way typical of Gordon Cosby's ministry. He had issued a call to church and the Lord had sent one person; so he treated that uncomplicated youth as though the whole future of the church depended on him. In time he was to believe even more deeply in ordinary persons who, in turn, were to believe more deeply in themselves. This is probably why the community that has come into being under his leadership gives so little attention to credentials-a fact which is at first disappointing to those who come presenting degrees and programs to help us out of the trouble we are forever in. In all the years that I have been in this community no one has ever asked me which college I attended, although ministers from other places inquire about this as well as about my theological training. I have to tell them that I did not make it very often to grade school, but that I put in four hard years in high school. When they indicate that this is very fine, I am never sure whether they are trying to communicate acceptance of me, or whether their attitude implies a widespread conviction that our educational institutions are failing to provide the training needed to conduct our affairs and build community-always a work of art. If we are to build the church we must each day learn things we were never taught.

Paradoxically, this community which takes so little notice of degrees gives inordinate attention to education. Five classes are still required for membership in the church: Old Testament, New Testament, Doctrine, Christian Growth and Ethics. In addition, in every eleven-week semester a half-dozen other classes dealing with some aspect of the inward-outward journey are offered. They vary in content and focus, and range all the way from "discovery of self" to journalizing and contemplation. Classes are taught by those whose call and gifts identify them as teachers. They arc always persons well-informed in a subject they have pursued because of an absorbing interest. We have discovered that people usually communicate well the subjects that have stirred something deep within themselves. The Usual student-teacher relationship seldom prevails. Most of the classes are conducted in the manner of a seminar with each student presenting findings from the application of the week's assignment in the living out of his or her fife.

Completion of two eleven-week classes in the school is a requirement for internship in one of the small groups. The fact that the five classes required for full membership take approximately two years always gives rise to the question, "How do you manage to find people who will go to school for that long a time?" The answer is that we do not try. The students who move through the school each year do not stop to consider that the classes are required for membership. They are not there to meet standards, but because it is a stimulating place to be. Most of us who have been in the membership for any length of time return to the school now and then for a new course that is being offered, or to review in our more "informed state" an old class.

When a person has had the equivalent of the subject matter covered in any one of the required courses, and if his small group concurs, we will waive the requirement for that class. The request, however, is seldom made. In the beginning we rather automatically gave special dispensation to ministers who came to be with us. After all, we reasoned, a person who has been to seminary and preached in a church would not need classes in New and Old Testament. We changed our attitude, however, when these same people later complained that they felt robbed-as though they had missed out on something intangible but essential for their belonging to the whole.

In the early days theology was taught and learned while the work of introducing prospective members to the community went on. The school assumed a more formal structure only as the church grew. One of the most powerful supporters was Mother Anne Campbell who was teaching a Bible class at her husband's large, conventional Baptist church. She talked so enthusiastically about the church that was getting underway that, with her encouragement, several good Baptists ventured over into the new fold, and then they, in turn, lured a few more. Elizabeth-Anne was also issuing frequent calls at Garfield Hospital, while Gordon shared his life and dream with every likely and unlikely soul that crossed his path. The street evangelist of Lynchburg now had as his mission field the unchurched of the nation's capital. Evcn so, at the end of the year the whole congregation numbered only nine.

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