To be a community

This is the predominant image in my theology of Church. It surely has many faces , but it begins with the journey to find out what it takes to live together and care for each other. When we are about this journey, we see the importance of communicating this perspective on life.

The emphasis on community is crucial, but it must also clearly define this community as something radically different than the rather loose, vague notion of it often applied to many differnet kinds of associations between people. It has become a buzz term for corporations and social groupings. It is not rare anymore to hear of this "community" or that.

I am building this Web site to explore the possibilities for the community to which the Church itself must be committed. This itself has proven to be a broad concept, with a variety of expressions, representations, and styles. But my vision involves very intentional movement toward participating in one another's personal and spiritual journeys in ways which our society has made it increasingly difficult.

To engage upon this journey into the depths of community, society and it's distractions and skewed values must be recognized and named, and we must allow our vision to confront what we find.

I have begun building this Web site to provide a place to explore what it means to be "Church" in this context. In this exploring of vision, community, and journey, Theological Education happens. There are resources in the official educational structures of the various theological groups, but there are also resources in the social sciences, in the psychological sciences and healing professions, and in the wisdom traditions of various cultures other than our own. There are also instances of dilution and compromise in all of these; values and approaches that serve status quo rather than the call to seek structures and relationships that represent the new community to which God is calling us.

This emphasis upon the Inward Journey is valuable in terms of its effects upon the Outward Journey; that our discoveries concerning the way human relationships ought to be will call upon us the processes which point us to creating structures which heal the broken, distorted structures in our world. The breadth of this concept should not discourage us from embarking upon the journey to begin forming the kind of community that will impact our lives and those around us with the good news that God intends for things to be different, and for healing to happen.

It is very apparent to me that my call for this time is to the online community. I am , in a sense, claiming quite a large "parish", but I also expect that as more of us with similar callings "meet" online, that this calling with take more specific forms and begin to blossom within a specifically focused community that will probably consist of people who are local to my geography and with whom I can covenant to meet on a regular basis, and also with people whom I meet and agree upon a similar covenant to be carried out in online meeting places.

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:34:41 PM.