As a community, we take two mission trips together a year and this spring we decided on heading to Kensington, Philadelphia where AIM used to have a huge missions base. We’ve heard plenty of amazing stories from people at AIM about Philly and the ministry there, we’ve all read The Irresistible Revolution by Shawn Claiborne who’s one of the founders of the Simple Way, a community endeavor we’ve modeled some aspects of ComLife after. AIM’s actually donated a building to the Simple Way’s Potter Street Community and we had hopes of getting to see their community in action while we were in town.
I’ll suffice it to say, we had no such luck in any of these plans materializing during our trip at all. In fact, this weeklong mission trip to Philly looked drastically different than any other mission trip I’ve ever been on. Why? Well for starters, we hardly ministered. Our plans for the week took a much different focus because we realized that there was some ministering that needed to happen within our own team.
In my last blog I talked about risk and its importance in building community. This week fo
r us as a community was an important one. I think we could have had a great week in Philly with a packed schedule of ministering to the hurting community of Kensington. I think God would have blessed us and we would have come home with some amazing stories under our belt. But as a community, we had hit our wall, and there were some long overdue conversations that needed to happen within our group.
So since our schedule was pretty wide open we took that time to begin to talk about some things that we had been hiding. It was a risk. We didn’t have to open up about these things. We didn’t have to spend hours each day walking through the crap that was going on in our hearts and minds. We didn’t have to be honest with where we were at. We could have just told ourselves that we were fine and moved on. We could have believed that this community wasn’t that important, after all, some people are leaving soon anyway so what’s the point? Why dig in now? Just let it rest.
No one cares anyway.
It’s amazing how those lies settle in so quickly and easily, huh? But as a team we cast them aside and said, No, we are
going to talk about this. We are going to be frank about how things affect us. We are going to be honest about what we’re feeling and how we’ve been hurt by people’s words and actions. We committed to this community and we are committed to this process.
So we dove in. We started by taking a few minutes to write some things down under three categories: Bright, Blurry, Blind. The bright things were the conflicts everyone in the community knew were taking place. Things like us always being late to meetings and never knowing who’s driving or what vehicles are available to use-these things always spring some kind of conflict. The blurry things were the conflicts that are there, but no one really talks about. Maybe they are alluded to or talked about in side conversations, but are never really resolved or communicated clearly. Blind things were conflicts that we were having personally, but have never told anyone about. These are the resentments and issues that we’ve been harboring in our hearts that never reach resolution because they are hidden within.
After about 15 minutes we put all our pieces of paper in the middle of the table and drew one out. Starting with the Bright topics we opened the discussion. It went back and forth with each person wanting to be heard, us learning how to listen, making mistakes, checking out, getting passionate and cussing, growing weary, restoring hope, clarifying intentio
ns, and seeking resolution. It was quite a process that at times seemed to be going nowhere. It’s amazing how much we can hurt each other in the process of a few months together. There were issues brought to the table that hadn’t been resolved since we all began in September last year!
We hadn’t really taken risks this big with each other until this moment. We’d had opportunities to dig in before, but had passed them up for ‘keeping the peace’, not causing any commotion, not rocking the boat, or not making people mad. We were not really sharing our hearts. We weren’t risking. What I’ve learned through this time is that hearts can’t be healed unless there’s some risk. Bitterness and resentment reign king until someone risks communicating some hard things. Until there’s a hurt identified and an opportunity to apologize, forward movement can’t really happen.
I could finally say that we stopped playing community and started actually living it.
ComLife is not just a trendy little community experiment you join to say you’ve been a part of something. ComLife is a platform where people who long to live out a life of authenticity and passion come together and RISK with one another the things within. It’s a place of self-discovery…a place you can’t get to without other people. How ironic is that? You can’t get to self-discovery without other people.
We long for it.
We were made for it.
God designed it that way.
If you don’t know where to start, check out ComLife-we’re in this together, and we’re in it for growth. We seek to be real and open and honest and loving and challenging. We’re accepting applications now until July 15th for our September 1st start date. It’s 11 months and it may just be the place where you can begin to take some risks.
