Clarence Jordan, Koinonia, and The Open Door Community
Remarks by Steve Clemens, July 16, 2006 at 25th Anniversary
of Open Door
Clarence’s Biography
Clarence Jordan was born in 1912 into a fairly-prominent,
well-to-do, white Southern family in Talbotton, GA. His brother went on to
serve on the Supreme Court of Georgia and his nephew, Hamilton Jordan served as
Chief of Staff for President Carter. So Clarence came from this good Georgia stock and somehow
something changed in him. In The Cotton Patch Evidence, which is a
biography of both the Koinonia Community and of Clarence, Dallas Lee talks
about an experience Clarence had when he was twelve. He recalled singing “Love
Lifted Me” at the local Baptist Church on Sunday and when he went home at
night, his house was only a block or so away from the county jail. And he heard
the screams at night coming from the man pulled on “the stretcher”, a rack with
a pulley and a chain, stretching the man out who was then beaten, knowing that the Warden, the man beating
the prisoner (who was most likely a black man), was a member of the choir at
that Baptist Church. The dissonance between the song and the subsequent actions
made a mark on the conscience of that young boy.
At age 17, Clarence enrolled in the Agriculture school at
the University of Georgia. Like fellow members of the white, male, ruling
class, Jordan signed up to become an officer in the ROTC unit – that’s the
heritage of the old Confederacy. Just before graduating with an officer’s
commission in the cavalry, while practicing shooting and stabbing at cardboard
and straw dummies from his horse, Clarence realized he couldn’t keep doing this
because he recalled from his Sunday School heritage the words of Jesus to love
one’s enemies and that dissonance between the two caused him to resign his
commission. His interest in following the call of Jesus led to a call to
seminary and after graduation he enrolled in the Southern Baptist Seminary in
Louisville, KY. While there, he started doing work in the African-American
community and churches in Louisville and fell in love and married Florence
Krueger, a local librarian. He and Florence had four children, Jan, Jim,
Eleanor, and Lenny.
Clarence also fell in love with the Greek, koine Greek, the
everyday language in which most of the New Testament was written, “street
Greek”. So when he was teaching or preaching, Clarence carried his Greek New
Testament and he’d just translate it on the spot. He stayed on to earn his
doctorate in that language, studying it to more fully understands the message
of Jesus and the early group of disciples and believers. But he didn’t remain a
scholar in that ivory tower because, while at seminary, he had to do some
practicum assignments and he ended up working in African-American churches and
started meeting people and saw their needs and had his heart changed. In 1942,
during WWII, he met Martin and Mabel England, American Baptist missionaries to
Burma who had returned to the U.S. because of the war. Clarence and Martin
shared ideas and wondered aloud what it might be like to live in a way that
replicated the life of the early church to see if it could be done – committed
to nonviolence, economic sharing, and racial reconciliation. They were excited
about the Sermon on the Mount. They said we gotta try this out – to see if we
could live like the early church did.
After looking for a potential site to practice their ideals, they
purchased a rundown farm in Sumter County in southwest Georgia, about 2 ½ hours
south of Atlanta at today’s driving speeds. They purchased it “on faith”. Joyce
Hollyday’s Clarence Jordan: Essential Writings contains Clarence’s
re-telling:
When we
started that thing, we were supposed to pay the fellow twenty-five hundred
dollars down. And Martin England, who was a missionary under the American
Baptist Foreign Mission Society to Burma – he and I agreed on the common purse
– we were going to pool everything – and I had the idea Martin was loaded. I
don’t know why I should think that – [he] being an American Baptist missionary.
But he talked “Let’s do this” and “Let’s do that,” and I said, “Yeah, let’s
do,” and I thought he had the money.
So
when we finally pooled our common assets, we had fifty-seven dollars and
thirteen cents – and both of us had resigned our jobs. But on the first day of
November 1942, right on the button, we walked in that real estate office and
put down that twenty-five hundred dollars. A fellow brought it to us, said the
Lord had sent him with it. I didn’t question him, where he’d been talking to
the Lord or anything like that. We’d take it right quick, before the Lord
changed his mind. (Hollyday, pg. 18-19)
So Clarence and Florence, Martin and Mabel, and their kids
moved to Sumter County Georgia. For the first five, six, seven, eight years,
Clarence was still the “golden boy” -in demand as a preacher in the local
churches. He also played the trumpet. But Clarence could talk and talk but when
he “put flesh” on those words, there was a different reaction. One Sunday, in
1950, a man from India was visiting Koinonia so Florence and Clarence took him
to church with them. Since the dark-skinned foreigner was a convert to
Christianity because of the work of Baptist missionaries, the Jordans didn’t
even think it would raise any issues with the members at Rehoboth Baptist
Church, just up the road from the farm community. But the people at Rehoboth
said, “We don’t allow ‘colored people’ to worship with us. The church felt the
Koinonians were trying to “integrate” their fellowship and voted the next week
to expel Clarence and Florence from that Baptist church. Tensions kept rising
and the reason why they were kicked out of the church was not just because they
brought a man of color into worship, it is because the word started getting
around –“hey this guy not only talks this Christianity stuff but they’re eatin’
together at Koinonia. These black and white folk are eatin’ together and
workin’ together. And that was the radical thing.” Clarence could talk all he
wanted to about racial reconciliation –that didn’t matter- but when they
started eatin’ together – that was the issue. And that was the crux of getting
kicked out of the church
In 1956, Clarence “sponsored” two black students to attend a
business college in Atlanta. When the newspaper carried the story that this white
man from outside Americus was trying to “integrate” the University system, “all
hell broke loose”. A grand jury was impaneled to try to close Kamp Koinonia
that the community ran in the summer with black and white children
participating together. The County Commissioners claimed the camp had health
code violations. (From their perspective, it wasn’t “healthy” for blacks and
whites to be together.) The GA
Bureau of Investigation (GBI) was asked to investigate these “race mixers” and
see what “illegal” activities they might be charged with. The Klu Klux Klan
held a rally and a long line of cars drove out to Koinonia to intimidate and
get the Koinonians to move. Finally, they tried to disrupt the community
economically. The local produce
stand run by the community was dynamited. An economic boycott was declared and
Koinonians could not buy or sell anything in the entire county. Members had to
travel 45 miles to Albany to purchase parts for the tractor, groceries and gas.
They couldn’t purchase seed. The chickens who provided eggs to sell for
community income had to be slaughtered because they couldn’t sell the eggs. And
ultimately the economic boycott got to a point where they also threatened
anyone who would consider selling anything to them so when one of the
businesses in town talked about selling some feed to Clarence and the
community, that business was dynamited as well. People supportive of the work of the community came from all
over to try to help out because the community was under seige. There were
bullets flying at night. Clarence, because he was speaking around the country
wrote to friends saying “help us out”. There were stories about the violence
directed at the community in Life, Time, and the Saturday Evening Post. Some
sent money as support. Others came. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker
Movement took her turn on “night watch” duty during Holy Week in 1957 and had a
flashlight shot out of her hands. Fortunately she wasn’t killed or injured but she
was frightened by the experience. When asked if she wanted a coat or a blanket
because she was shaking, she replied, “that ain’t cold – that’s scared!” Shots
were fired into many of the community buildings. And that was the reality
Koinonia faced late in the fifties and into the early sixties. Community
members were called “communists, nigger –lovers, …” I’d encourage you to get copies of what Clarence wrote or
listen to some of the tape recordings made by him during this time to hear some
of these powerful stories.
Finally, the community started a mail-order business in
order to survive economically because it would be protected by federal agents
(post office) rather than the local “law-enforcement” people who were in
collusion with the Klan. The motto for this mail-order business of selling
fruitcake, pecans, and peanut products was “Help us ship the nuts out of
Georgia!” Insurance companies dropped their coverage – even Lloyds of London
would cover Koinonia - so Koinonia turned to the wider community asking people
to pledge money, $25, $50, as a
form of “common insurance” in the event of a need arising due to the boycott
and violence. Out of that also came the idea which became the idea for a “Fund
for Humanity” which I’ll get to in a minute.
After the physical violence died down by ’63, people started
to leave. By 1968, only the Wittkamper family and the Jordans remained. Clarence
died in 1969 just as the first house under the new housing ministry was being
completed. He was working on his Cotton Patch translation of the book of John when
he slumped over from a heart attack. He was 57.
Clarence’s Theology
and Ideas
There are several words or phrases that Clarence Jordan used
that help summarize his theology. The word Koinonia
is a term used in the Greek New Testament which described the early church and
has been defined as “fellowship”, “community”, and refers to the practice of
“holding all things in common”. So when the Jordans and the Englands wanted to
begin their “experiment” they thought this term could help capture what defined
the early church – that passion of holding all things in common, of loving one
another, of being in fellowship with one another, and being on fire with the
Holy Spirit.
As a student of agriculture, Clarence often used the term “demonstration plot” where farmers use
test acreage to show the efficacy of various brands of seed, fertilizer, or
farming techniques. So, you’d set up a demonstration plot and plant five rows
of corn with one seed or fertilizer and then plant another five next to it with
the competing brand, and so on. Clarence said what we need is a demonstration
plot of God’s Kingdom. We need to see if it is going to work out. We need to
try it. We need to live it. So that’s what Koinonia was to be: a demonstration
plot – a visible manifestation of what the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God, might
look like.
When translating the New Testament directly from the Greek
while preaching, Clarence said that the word metanoia, used to describe the early part of John the Baptist’s and
Jesus’ ministries as “repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” is a
terrible translation because metanoia is not about “feeling sorry for getting
caught doing wrong” but is much closer to the English word metamorphosis. A
caterpillar doesn’t get sorry because he’s about to become butterfly, he’s
getting prepared for a new way of life, his day of liberation. Metanoia/metamorphosis
is changing so you can get equipped for the new order. “Change your whole way
of thinking because the new order of God’s Spirit is impinging upon you!” So,
the decision to follow Jesus is not one of getting sorry, being repentant, as
much as it is rather getting equipped to be about the loving relationships, the
sharing, and the reconciliation that Jesus is a part of.
Clarence talked a lot about faith and there are these wonderful, pithy quotes of his like “fear
is the polio of the soul” Jordan often contrasted faith with fear: “Fear is the
polio of the soul which keeps us from walking by faith.” “Faith is not a
stubborn belief in spite of all evidence but rather a life lived in scorn of
the consequences.” He said what faith is is “betting one’s life on the unseen
realities”. They are still realities – they’re just not seen – and it is our
job to make those realities visible by the way we live our lives. Clarence used the phrase incarnational theology to remind us
that we have to live out our beliefs in our everyday practice. Theology isn’t
just an academic exercise but has to inform how we live. He talked about incarnational evangelism in that our lives
speak more than our words. We give witness to what we believe by how we live
our lives. We speak more with our lives than with our words, “turning our
convictions into deeds.”
Clarence reminded us that the New Testament was originally
written in a language that the common person could understand. For us to better
understand the message of the Gospel, it needs to be translated into our time
and culture – thus Clarence’s “Cotton Patch” version. He translated the texts
into 20th century Southern vernacular so local folk could relate to
the stories and concepts. The New Testament was written in the everyday,
common, street Greek and its not all this flowery language – it’s the language
the common people would understand – and it was written in a local time and a
local place so to translate it into our time and place today, we have to help
people understand what the geography was like, what the relationships were
like, and so in the Cotton Patch translations you find the story of the Good
Samaritan was recast as a white businessman traveling from Ellaville to Albany.
Now Clarence’s listeners would know there was one town between those two places
– Americus. So when the businessman is robbed and beaten and left for dead on
the outskirts of Americus and first a traveling evangelist and then the gospel
choir director pass by the victim, the man who stops to help is a local black
farmer in an old beat-up pickup truck. He helps bandage the victim and takes
him to the hospital. When Jesus asks his listeners “who was the neighbor to
that man?” (the “Good Samaritan”), we get, “Ooh, I don’t want to answer that
question. It was the nigg … - I mean it was the colored man …” The Good
Samaritan in the context of the 1950s and 1960s in the South, and today, is
that poor African-American brother, is that man on Death Row, is that homeless
person down the street, is that person with mental illness – that’s the Good
Samaritan for us today. So that’s what Clarence helps us understand with his
Cotton Patch translation.
The virgin birth
for Clarence Jordan was less about whether or not Mary was sexually “pure” but
the proper emphasis on the story was the idea that her offspring was “sired by
God”. Clarence complained that the church too often over-emphasized the deity
of Jesus, obscuring the radical concept of the humanity of God. Clarence talks about the ancient church heresy of
Gnosticism – of only seeing Jesus as divine and he said the real error of the
church is seeing that God has taken on humanity and as Clarence translates it,
“The Word became flesh and God parked his mobile home next to ours” adding,
yeah, and the black bastard drove down the property values. That’s where the
Gospel comes home for Clarence.
When Clarence spoke about the resurrection, he said:
The good news
of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home with him, but
that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked,
thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers [and sisters] with him. … The proof that God
raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his
transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant
grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a
carried-away church. (The Substance of
Faith pg.28-29)
That’s the incarnation.
The Communities of
Koinonia
The Koinonia Community was really two separate experiments.
From 1942 until 1968, it was known as Koinonia Farm. Koinonia Partners was the
name of the community that existed from the dissolution in 1968 until the
mid-1990s. The Koinonia Farm community, designed to be a demonstration plot, had
a strict policy of personal divestiture before joining. You had to give your
money away – it couldn’t be given to the community. Clarence remarked that if
you gave it to the community, you would either want to have a greater say in
how things were run or the community would be tempted to sit around and “talk
about theology all day” rather than working. “Give it away and then come join
us.” Community aspects included shared meals and shared work. The common purse
was the vehicle for economic sharing – you didn’t have your own possessions,
you shared economically. There was an expectation of a commitment to gospel
nonviolence based on Jesus’ dictum to “love your enemies.” And the term that
Clarence used before many of us were educated in the late 60s by our sisters to
use inclusive language, Clarence talked a lot about “brotherhood” and what he
meant by that was that equality of all of us but being in relationship with each
other, and for Clarence, especially that meant in the South healing that racial
divide.
Although the original expression of the community in 1942
expected a life-long commitment – you were in it for the long haul- by 1968,
only two families remained. So obviously, with a lifetime commitment, something
changed but that was the original intent. Numerous conscientious objectors to
the Korean War came because it was a safe haven for people who refused to fight
or the draft could receive a respite and hospitality. People supportive of the
witness for racial reconciliation during the turbulent 50s and 60s came and
went. By 1968, with only two families left, Clarence asked what should we do. Clarence
deemed the demonstration plot of this community a failure. Clarence had given
up on community being able to happen in that time and that place and he was
ready to pack his bags and head to Atlanta to finish his Cotton Patch version
and continue the speaking engagements which became a regular endeavor. But, you
know, Clarence’s speaking would not have been the same – because the power of
Clarence’s speaking was always backed up by that demonstration plot. Even the
failure of it could be said “here is a place where we’re trying it out, where
we’re trying to live it out, where we’re trying to incarnate it” – you can’t
talk about the incarnation if you’re not trying to do it.
However, the group of friends Clarence called together in
1968 to help discern the future developed the idea of making Koinonia into a
service organization which featured “Partnership Industries” as a way to
continue to build bridges between whites and blacks in rural Sumter County
Georgia. Despite the fact that the reorganization of Koinonia did not
anticipate the reforming of an “intentional Christian community”, many of those
who came to join this service organization in the early 70s were looking for a
change and wanted to experience an alternative lifestyle, to challenge the
structures of society, to deepen relationships and had been inspired by the
stories of the witness of Koinonia during the late 50s and early 60s. There
developed a distinction between “Resident Partners” (those who had moved to
Koinonia from elsewhere to be part of this ministry) and “employees” (mostly
local black folk who participated in Koinonia activities for wages but did not choose
to live in community-owned buildings). Although the original design of Koinonia
Partners called for all the workers to be “partners” and share in the
decision-making as well as the risks (profits or loss), many of the local
residents preferred to have a steady income as wage-earners rather than as
“partners” in a risky business venture.
The “Partnership Industries” over the years included farming
row crops and fruit and nut trees, a mail-order business with a bakery selling
pecan and peanut products, fruitcake, and books and tapes of Clarence’s work, a
short-lived sewing industry selling shorts and slacks, a handcrafts and pottery
industry, an Early Childhood education program with a pre-school and nursery,
and a housing ministry which served as the fore-runner of what became Habitat
For Humanity.
The organization was designed as a hierarchical structure
with a “Director” appointed by the Board of Directors and s/he made decisions
affecting the industries and also decided who could stay and do what jobs. As
more people arrived who were interested in “community”, this old structure
needed changing. Under the leadership of Don Mosley, the Director position
evolved into a “Coordinator of Activities” for business and economic decisions,
a Residency Committee for determining who could stay, a Fellowship Team
responsible for the worship and community life, and a Housing Committee for who
lived where-type of decisions. Decentralizing the leadership and helping share
the responsibilities became the new model for community.
Expectations for membership as a “Resident Partner” both
echoed and differed from the expectations of the previous community venture.
Instead of a life-long commitment, prospective partners would commit to
remaining “into the indefinite future” (with no plans to leave within 2-3
years). It was recognized that God might “call” people elsewhere so even though
departure of fellow Resident Partners was somewhat akin to divorce, it was recognized
that a lifetime commitment was not realistic for this community. Instead of
total financial divestiture, partners were expected to live off the resources
of the community while you were there, not owning their own cars or houses. Although
no Social Security-type wages would accrue to them as Resident Partners, those
who came with pensions or retirement savings were not instructed to give them
up. It was assumed that the community would endeavor to meet your financial and
medical needs out of its “common purse”.
Besides a clear expectation that all prospective Resident
Partners were committed to a general understanding of Christian discipleship, taking
the life and teaching of Jesus seriously, the membership covenant also included
five additional commitments:
- Nonviolence – Jesus’ call to love one’s enemies was seen as a central aspect of the Gospel.
- Economic Sharing – the common purse (as modified above) was also a central value.
- Racial Reconciliation – partners made a commitment to work on building bridges over the racial divide. Eating the common noontime meal together was an important public demonstration of this.
- Simple Living – later modified to be identified as “compassionate living” meant a desire and action to consume fewer of the world’s resources while living in relationship to others with less abundance. Instead of striving for “purity” (eating only organically, vegetarian, biking instead of driving, …), compassionate living also takes into consideration relationship building in the process.
- Service to others – although some communities are designed for self-help, contemplative or monastic orders, or other purposes, Koinonians were pledged to be engaged in service to others as a primary expression of their Christian commitment.
However, by the early 90s the community struggled with its
identity. The original goal of the partnership industries was never realized as
most of the people of color expressed interest in working for wages rather than
getting involved in the risks and meetings that joint management would entail.
Habitat for Humanity became a viable reality thus lessening the uniqueness and
need for Koinonia’s housing ministry. The state of GA began to offer public
kindergarten programs, making a valuable part of the KCDC (Koinonia Child
Development Center) less necessary. The pottery had fallen into disuse after
the primary potter left. It became more difficult to inspire new community
members to get excited about marketing fruitcake and candy as part of the push
for more mail order sales prior to Christmas and the dissonance between running
a fall-oriented business and preparing for the advent of a radically
socially-justice-oriented Messiah continued to cause tensions between
“ministry” and “business” or self-sustaining endeavors. Koinonia always had
great difficulty in attracting people of color to join the Resident Partnership
so when the Board tried to address this failure in 1993 by ending the common
purse and made all those working for Koinonia “partners”, within a few years
the community had completely disappeared.
I don’t wish to end on such a negative note because despite,
once again, the ideal of community ending in “failure”, the experience of
participating in Intentional Christian Community at Koinonia was, for me, a
time of deep spiritual formation, challenge, and inspiration for which I will
be eternally grateful. One only needs to look at the level of violence and
hostility directed toward them to realize how radical Clarence Jordan and the
Koinonia Communities were. So I’d like to conclude with a reiteration of
Clarence’s key ideas followed by my own “lessons learned” from my sixteen years
in community.
Key to understanding Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia
movement was taking Jesus seriously. There are four things that I wish to lift
up as essential to Clarence’s ideas. Community, economic sharing, love of
enemies, and, to steal Bonhoeffer’s term, the cost of discipleship.
Clarence said we have to demonstrate reconciliation by
living in Community, by eating
together, by working together, crossing all those lines that divide us:
racial/gender/educational/generational. Whatever lines are set up, we need to
cross them. We need to be reconciled and we need to demonstrate that
reconciliation by eating together and working together, worshipping together.
Economic sharing: for Clarence, materialism
is one of the greatest sins of the American culture. By imitating the common
purse of the early Christian movement, Clarence called for a radical disjuncture with the
individualistic capitalistic ethic. Setting up the Fund For Humanity,
setting up alternative structures, no-interest loans. Clarence even had a
“cow-lending “library” where if your cow went dry, you borrowed another cow and
you swap them out. Also, peacemaking, love of one’s enemies: Peacemaking
is essential to the character of God so it must be a characteristic of God’s
people. It is a critical component of discipleship – especially in a nation
which threatens the entire creation with its militarism and “the bomb”. Koinonia’s
main contribution in the arena of nonviolence was in response to the attacks
and constant threats it faced in the late 50s and early 60s. In the
post-boycott era, when there was less physical hostility – there was still
psychic hostility – it was some of Clarence’s disciples, especially Ladon
Sheats and others took this discipleship commitment to nonviolence to a new
level – nonviolent resistance to war and the arms race. Ladon helped mentor me
and helped mentor many of us in this area.
I don’t think Clarence was ever thrown in jail for
“protesting” (although he may have been jailed briefly while being harassed by
the local “law enforcement” [sic] officials – he never deliberately went to
jail like Dr. King did in protest - BUT he certainly inspired a lot of others
to take those risks. In one of his sermons on “The Mind of Christ in the Racial
Conflict”, Clarence questioned the process most churches use in selecting a
pastor.
Actually,
we’re looking more for an octopus from the seminary than we are a prophet from
God. I think we ought to begin to investigate not so much how many years [one}
has spent in the seminary diddling around on a doctoral thesis, but how many
years s/he’s spent in jail, because somehow or other a [person] is better able
to get up a sermon in a cell than in a church study. (Substance of Faith pg. 111)
And, taking a page from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Clarence always
stressed the cost of discipleship.
Following Jesus will cost you everything, but in the process, you gain a whole
new “family”. Yes, you will get phone calls at 2AM threatening your life, getting
threats, you will be visited and questioned by the FBI. Actually, in my case,
it was usually Christine who answered the phone at 2 or 3 AM when I received
death threats prior to blocking the nuclear train in 1985 when it came through
Montezuma, GA. When we took the full-scale model of the electric chair to the
Courthouse lawn in Americus every time the State of Georgia scheduled an
execution, we would get phone calls at night or people would drive by and yell
at you or spit at you. When the FBI came to inquire about why I refused to
cooperate for the renewed military draft registration, I politely refused to
answer their questions in front of the Koinonia volunteers working with me in
the fall of 1982. In Clarence’s time he said if you haven’t been called a
communist, you aren’t worth your salt. And so Clarence would say to us today,
if you haven’t been called a terrorist, if you haven’t been called a bum, if
you haven’t been called an agitator, you probably ain’t worth your salt.
In the community in Minneapolis where I live now, where we
have turn-over, you always end up “reinventing the wheel”. We now recognize
that people will always “come and go” so we’ve developed what we call a
“turn-over file” so the next person who does this job or task has notes to
follow how it was done before. So Neela can create such a file for Anniversary
celebrations at Open Door so when you celebrate your 30th or 50th
Anniversaries, you can see what Neela did to organize this weekend. Well, here
is my “turn-over file” for my years at Koinonia – my “lessons learned” that
I’ll pass on for what its worth. Not in any particular order, just some
thoughts that came to me about my sixteen years in the south Georgia “commune”.
Community is the best way to end the schizophrenia in many
of our lives – we have to learn to work and worship with the same group of
people – and that’s the key to community is when you worship with the same
group of people you work with, you build that bond. Lessons learned (in no
particular order- these are the thoughts that came to me this morning):
- Leadership in community must be named, recognized, and held accountable. Every group will have leaders but those who aren’t named and recognized can’t be held accountable.
- One must deal with the issue of “leaving community”. In our mobile culture, people come and go but in intentional community this is a hard reality which causes feelings of betrayal, abandonment, failure. And the longer one stays before leaving makes it feel something akin to divorce. When Christine and I left Koinonia – she after 20 years and me after 16 years – we we’re ready for the grieving process that we underwent and that the remaining community underwent. Clarence said it is a demonstration plot. Gandhi said it’s an “experiment with truth”. We have to give ourselves to these experiments and sometimes we are going to fail. Let’s confess it and move on. A community must learn to creatively deal with these transitions. Ritual might be helpful in this process just like when members join.
- It is essential to resolve conflict within the community in positive ways instead of avoiding it and hoping it disappears.
- The community focus and energy must be kept on the mission or else petty differences will work at your destruction. And that’s one of the bitter lessons for us at Koinonia is when we lost the focus. When Habitat started gaining credibility in the mid-80s and our housing ministry was no longer “cutting edge”. When the state kindergarten program made the KCDC less essential. When we tried to find people to “market” – encouraging people to buy more fruitcake and candy products to sustain us economically, we lost our values. And, in so doing, when you lose your sense of mission, then you focus on discussions over owning pets, how much or little (if any) meat to serve at common meals, whether co-ed use of the sauna is OK, … and those petty differences surface and it will only accentuate your differences rather than draw you together.
- Vision and renewal are essential for the long haul. You have to have people calling out that vision, that renewal. That is where the Bible Study, the inspirational teaching, the mentoring, the pastoral help, all is essential for community. Where there is no vision for the future, the community flounders and dies or becomes irrelevant.
- Stewardship of common property is difficult in an ownership society. Just because someone has a PhD in an esoteric academic field does not mean one is exempt from checking the oil level on the community-owned car. It’s hard because we are so used to private ownership. When it is common ownership, who takes responsibility for the maintenance, the upkeep? Cleaning the toilets – that’s the common property.
- Intergenerational aspects of community life are both a challenge and a blessing. One of the real blessings of living at Koinonia was being able to raise your kids with alternate grandparents, alternate aunts and uncles, peers – having that inter-generational aspect was such a gift. But, “We tried that - and it didn’t work” coming from a veteran of community (especially a founder) can kill a conversation with newer members. Elders in a community can be a wonderful blessing but can also be a drag on new endeavors.
- Be open to change and growth. Gandhi called his life “experiments with Truth”. Beware of complacency and living on the laurels of the community’s past (now mythological) history. Remember, if you are faithful to the Gospel, you will be attacked. The Domination System, the system that runs the powers today, is always threatened by that faithful response to the Gospel. You will be attacked. If all speak well of you, you must not be clear enough about your collective discipleship.
Koinonia gave tangible evidence to the Open Door Community
in its founding that intentional Christian community with economic sharing was
possible. The Open Door, in exchange, continued to remind Koinonia not to get
too comfortable or complacent. I think the relationship between these two
communities was one of symbiosis, of giving and receiving. Together, we enabled
each other to be more fully representative of the Body of Christ. For that I
give thanks to God for you all and celebrate with you your 25 years of struggle
and joy.
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