Have had an interesting chain of thoughts running through my brain over the last week or so. Met up with a few old school friends last Saturday for a BBQ, and one of the friends who was there was someone who up until about a year ago would have been someone I’d have asked for advice on spiritual matters and the like.
Disturbingly, in the past year this friend has joined what ultimately is a cult in Sydney, albeit one that doesn’t seem to be completely dangerous. but certainly not at all good. And in chatting with her about what had changed about her, and why is living in this community, one thing stood out to me. Above anything, she said that their community was all about forsaking everything to follow Christ. And to be brutally honest, some of the model that this group uses could be a lot closer to the way we should be living than it is in my life at the moment.
They live with about 25 people sharing four houses. And in everything they do, they live simply, opting to forsake the trappings of modern living like computers, or even telephones, and while some of them work part-time, all their money is shared, and no-one’s needs are put above anyone elses. When they are not working, they spend their time witnessing to people (and I’m sure there’s some weird stuff in there, my friend was pretty sketchy on the details), and ministering to the poor.
And while I’m not for a moment saying that I’m about to uproot and join this cult (there’s some very, very dodgy theology and ideas floating around, that are not OK at all) it seems to me that if we were to genuinely attack this God thing with ABSOLUTELY no pre-concieved ideas, this could quite possibly be a lot closer to the model we’d start with than even anything as radical as the emerging church forge type model. But ofcourse I’ll still be doing church on Sunday as usual, it’s pretty hard to make a change anywhere other than your head.