Continuation of thoughts on community

Keith (this is in response to a comment on my last writing), I greatly appreciate your comments and questions, and was hoping you would respond (and I knew you would). I can't agree more with your response to students speaking of "no community" and the time after graduation. My associate pastor and were speaking of this recently, and he actually spoke of his family being his community of support, and to reach out to (kids and relatives). Life gets in the way sometimes, but we still long for the closeness of what we experienced at the OCBP, and hopefully long for the return of Christ and the joy that will come with it.

As far as comparing OCBP and LDW go, I think there is one primary difference, with others that stem from it. The major difference is moving from society to a wilderness, versus still working a job while living "in community". Both have benefits. The benefit of a wilderness community is that I think it is easy to recognize the absolute uniqueness of living together in the woods. It should be easier to realize that group interaction on LDW cannot happen on a campus, because there are thousands of other people around. That realization should hopefully prevent a disillusioned belief that an tightly woven community can form and stay together for a long period of time. Unfortunately, the difficulty in going into the woods, is that things may seem clear in the wilderness, but get awfully murky when you add many other voices, and not as many direction givers. There is also a greater chance for individual (not in an individualistic way) leadership on LDW. There seem to be more chances for failure, which increase the growth opportunities if they are handled well.

The benefit to the beach is that it still connects with day to day life and interaction with the world. Students do not lose complete contact with culture, news, or family for that period of time. It allows common connections to continue, while still giving challenges to students. Leadership opportunities come inside the house, where students can initiate conversations, must take part in planning concentrated times of focusing on God (some people call this worship), and some can lead in their cook groups. All of these opportunities are great, but they still, like LDW, lead to a focus on the inner group of Christians, and create a "bubble", if you will, that people want to see on campuses.

As I write this, I wonder if what I am looking for is a way to equip students to lead others out of process of looking into their own groups, and instead, look for opportunities to go to other groups and establish themselves relationally and structurally. I would love to see more of my student leaders approach me and tell me that they are leaving the leadership team to pursue interaction in other on-campus groups (of a non-Christian nature), but still want to maintain a relationship with me or another campus minister to help guide them. Maybe this is what Steve Garber does when he meets with individuals from lofty places and offers them encouragement and vision to go back to the world they came from and cast light into the darkness.

At the same time, I don't think the desire to be in a place (that lasts longer than simply 2 hours on Sunday mornings) where Christians join together in heart and mind to glorify God will ever fade from us. It is the way we were created in the beginning, to glorify God with no interruptions of brokenness. Do the communities we create during the summer cast normative visions for us? In many ways, yes, but there will always be a struggle to live normatively in a broken world,and that is the conversation that does not happen very often at our beach projects. How do we live together, yet not want to create and sustain insulating environments?

I would love some more questions or statements to help guide my thoughts on this, so please leave some comments.

Grace and mercy,
DEW