A brightly colored bus turned the corner into a narrow one-way street in a congested residential area of Washington D.C. A swarm of neighborhood children just out of school flocked around; an old woman across the street phoned the police as the bus backed into a parking area in front of her house. The Fisherfolk had arrived -- a traveling ministry of the Community of Celebration in Colorado, a renewal community committed to spreading a vision of the corporate renewal of the structures and ministries of the church. Those of us in the Sojourners community had invited them to be with us for a few days early last April. The Fisherfolk use the media of music, dance, and drama to carry the vision of church renewal. Though most of the ten-person team do not have p rofessional experience, they have developed a very polished musical style. Someone only superficially acquainted with their purposes might see them only as a performing group whose sole interest was in the creation of new forms of worship. Their commitment to the renewal of the church, however, distinguishes them from other traveling musical teams. Also, they are internally structured as a “mini-church” sent out to reflect the life of the Community of Celebration from which they come, ministering the fullness of Christ’s life through the relationships they have among themselves. One team member expressed it, “We minister primarily not through what we do, but through who we are.”
Another person on the team went on to say: “People have been going to church for a long time, and what we need now is to be the church. Worship is a means to express that life to God together ... We strive to make our music and drama a genuine expression of ourselves. That way people can enter into it and it’s not just entering into a drama or dance; it’s entering into us. Because it comes out of who we are; it comes up out of our community life.”
We had asked the Fisherfolk to teach our community about worship. We had come to share a common perception about its centrality in the renewal of the church, and our experience had taught us that we would not experience the power of God in our involvements in the world if we were not experiencing the power of God in our worship with each other. We had come to trust the Fisherfolk as a “worshiping community,” because we knew worship for them was not a separate activity isolated from the daily involvement of their lives, and we knew how they as a team and how their whole community back home were struggling with the broader issues of discipleship in the world.
One of the leaders of the team, Brian Howard, shared with us some of that common struggle. “A part of our life as a body of Christ was weak,” he was saying. “Our worship life was mature and growing and strong; our life was deeply affecting other people socially -- a lot of marriages and broken lives were put back together. But politically there was something missing. The Spirit of God knows our needs for growth; He knows where he is taking us. And so he brought us into involvement with you at Sojourners.
“We are both coming from opposite ends of the life of the church and coming to a common point together. To me that’s a very amazing thing, because it took us needing to be very open to each other and willing to change our ideas and lifestyle. That’s the only way I can see renewal continuing to happen in the church. It’s just going to take a tremendous openness to each other and a belief that God’s Spirit is leading us and directing us.”
The growing relationship between our two communities has confirmed our belief that God is beginning to do a powerful thing, as individuals from different renewal movements come into relationship to each other and begin to share life with each other. We are finding a deeper unity about what the life of God’s kingdom is, but a real diversity of ministry flowing out of that. There is a growing concern for the meaning of discipleship in the world and a common search for ways that the various ministries of the different communities can be more in relationship to each other, with the different ministries informing each other, supporting each other, working together, and bringing wholeness to the shared vision of the renewal of the church.
The Community of Celebration was established in the fall of 1975 at the invitation of the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, Bishop William Frey (formerly the Bishop of Guatemala but forced out of the country six years ago because of opposition to certain government activities). This is the third Community of Celebration to be established. The first was begun in 1972 and is now located in Wargrave, England; the second, established in 1975, is located in Scotland and is the international center for promoting renewal and co-ordinating the various activities. Ultimately, the vision is to have four or five regional Communities of Celebration in the United States.
Each of the three Communities of Celebration have flowed from the renewal of the Church of the Redeemer in Houston which began in 1964 when a new Christian community with a whole style of life began to emerge. Graham Pulkingham, rector of the parish at that time, remembers “that those beginnings had all to do with the whole question of how, as a Christian, one goes about loving and serving the world.” The Church of the Redeemer was a dying, inner-city church in the midst of a changing and decaying residential area. Graham found himself helpless and powerless in being able to love and care for the people that were on the very doorsteps of his church.
In the midst of that situation, a group of five families and a few single people, out of their common concern to live lives of loving servanthood, began to share their own lives with one another in various practical ways. Two of the single young adults moved into the homes of two of the families. Troubled people were also made a part of some of the families, as this seemed to be the only way to give them the continued support that they needed for their own healing. Slowly a common life began to develop, as the natural families expanded themselves to meet the needs of an inner-city neighborhood and joined with other expanded families to become a community of households.
As this new lifestyle developed, a lot of changes were necessary in the lives of individuals. In order to support the ministry and care for those in need, income and tasks began to be redistributed. The social life of individuals had to be reordered to meet the demands of the ministry. Relationships between family members inevitably changed as new people came to be a part of families.
Such a lifestyle permitted members of the community to be released for ministry to differing situations. Graham recalls:
“Christian communities have often been accused by those from without and within the church of 'opting out' of real life in the world -- of choosing a lifestyle less complex and less confusing than the one most people lead. Our community life has provided for us, however, a means of 'opting into life' in the world. Most of us were unable to live fulfilling and meaningful lives of love and service as individuals or families and have found that Christian community life has enabled us to offer ourselves more meaningfully and purposefully than we were once able.”
As the community became the vital center of the church, it created a strong interest on the part of other churches for their own renewal. To meet this growing demand, a renewal agency, The Fishermen, Inc., was formed as an outreach arm of the parish. It was established to help form community in other places. With the move to Colorado, Fishermen has been organizationally removed from the Church of the Redeemer and expanded into an ecumenical organization which sponsors, stimulates, and supports outreach for the renewal of the church through community. A core of people from Houston, and a couple of leaders from the Scotland Community of Celebration, moved to form the base of the new community in Colorado.
The Community of Celebration is a renewal community with an ecumenical ministry that has the official sanction of the Episcopal church. Through Fishermen, Inc., they hope to spread a vision of the corporate renewal of the church -- not just personal renewal, not just liturgical renewal, but a renewal of the structures and ministries of the church itself. Basic to this commitment is a realization, as Graham says, that “the church in its present structural form is incapable of being the real church.” They are intent on helping to create an alternative form, believing that the church should be restructured to form basic Christian communities which can create an environment where it is possible for a person to live a vital Christian life in the world.
The Community of Celebration does not export a “model” of church renewal, because renewal will likely be expressed differently in every situation. However, they do think that certain basic principles of corporate community life need to be shared with other communities, even though these basic principles may be expressed in quite different ways. Hopefully, their experience can help other communities catch a vision of what, in their own circumstances, God might do.
The Community of Celebration participates in church renewal through a variety of activities. It is the support base for the Fisherfolk traveling team who at the invitation of church leaders seek to create an interest in community and to foster renewal in local parishes and congregations. The base community is not only the life that the traveling team shares, but it gives validity to their ministry. The traveling team is sent from the community, carrying the authority and validity of the community with them.
The community is also a training center for church leaders and others who come to gain first-hand experience and knowledge about community life. It is difficult for renewal to take place in another church without some existing “pilot project” where it is already functioning. People learn what needs to be done from the experience of seeing it happen. The traveling team will invite leaders and their families to live with the community for several months or as long as a year or two, becoming a full part of the community life and developing their leadership potential from within an existing, growing community structure.
In addition, the community acts as a resource center for parishes which are not able to cope with the deeply disturbed people among them. As a caring community with a healing environment, individuals with various kinds of deep personal problems and needs can be received and find a love and pastoring that often leads to their wholeness. Finally, a newly emerging purpose of the community is to be supportive of the work of Bishop Frey in his vision of the renewal of the whole Episcopal diocese of Colorado.
The community’s life is structured in such a way as to facilitate these various purposes. Income, resources, talents are totally shared, as well as the various tasks of living and making home together. A number are part of the traveling ministries that go to churches seeking renewal; others stay home and care for those needing help and caring, while some care for the children (at present there are ten) and the physical needs of the whole community. Presently there are fifty-two living on Thunderbird Ranch at Woodland Park, a retreat facility leased for one dollar a year for the next twenty years by Grace Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs. There are families and single people, clergy and lay, professional and unskilled, young and old -- from newborn to 55 years.
The new style of life that is growing among them, it is hoped, can offer the possibility of a distinctively Christian response to modern western culture. They believe that the church needs to exercise a prophetic ministry in the way it lives; that the church needs to speak to the western world that the western way of life is not going to last. Many people have been deadened to the gospel and unresponsive to it because of the lifestyle of the church. The Christian can no longer live the ordinary life of the man or woman in western civilization if the gospel is going to be credible. The Community of Celebration wants to challenge the church to that new way of living.
Bob Sabath is web technologist of Sojourners.
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