The Dream

(From a Facebook friend)

I want to be part of a community that I love and that loves me.

A place where we get past the polite niceness, beyond the pretence and the masks, and get really irritated with each other. And then stick at it, and stick together.

I want to be part of something that is marked by its welcome, its hospitality and its inclusiveness. A place with fuzzy edges, where no one decides who belongs and is ‘in’ or ‘out’.

I want to be part of a group of people who are obsessed with Jesus, rather than Christianity. A place that is passionately focussed on Jesus and learning to live as followers of his way in real life today. A place where we’re becoming more like Jesus as we learn the ancient spiritual disciplines and work together to make them part of our lives.

I want to belong to a community where I can be myself, warts and all. A place that, on the one hand will accept me as I am right now, but on the other hand will provoke and inspire me to become more of what I could be. A place where my brokenness and fears and habits are part of the process. A place where we hold on to the ‘ideal’ but also celebrate the ‘real’.

I want to be part of something that treats people like adults. A place that values everyone’s experience and perspective. A place where people are motivated by love rather than guilt.

I want to be part of a community that is both of our culture, so that it connects with the language and images and music and experiences of everyday life. But one that also goes against the grain of our culture because we serve one another and live sacrificially and cross boundaries of class and age and colour.

A place that makes the difference in the things that feel too big for us as individuals. Whether that’s the hassle my kids will get when they can’t wear designer trainers or the impotence I feel in the face of ethical and environmental issues.

A place that makes us yearn for justice and beauty.

A place that equips us for life in the worlds we live in, and gives us the fire we need to change them.