Kim Priore

The non-FCCH readers are going to have to bear with me on this one, and will require a bit of explanation.  Of late, I have been dragged kicking and screaming into a little something called “40 Days of Community” ™, brought to you by the same people who brought you the Purpose Driven Life ™, the Purpose Driven Journal ™, and what I maintain *must* be out there somewhere, the Purpose Driven Lunchbox ™.  And right now you’re probably asking yourself, gee, what’s wrong with community?  Sounds like a great idea to me Kim.  Isn’t this just one more example of you being a cranky, hyper-critical bitch?  And this may very well be true.

I’m all for community, I really am.  In fact, I lived in it once for a year, an “intentional” one, to be exact, where I learned many valuable lessons that can be summed up in the Onion article entitled “Marxists’ Apartment a Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn’t Work.”  (See especially the part about the organic peanut butter).  But seriously, I really did learn a lot, about myself, about community, about what our body of believers could and should look like.  We did it by studying the greats: Merton, Nouwen, Day, the Acts 2 community, others.  We did it not by stocking up on new books and dvds and posters, but by living life stripped down of the consumerist culture that we had known back home and looking to eachother for insights.  And I tried to bring those lessons back home with me and incorporate them into life here.  So I guess what really bugs me is the insinuation that I didn’t have “community” before this Hawaiian-shirt wearing dude came along and taught me all about it, in weekly installments of theological insights that can be summed up in 4 easy fill in the blank points that all happen to start with the same letter. 

I’m all for *real* community, not the manufactured kind.  I think Warren’s a great person who’s done some great things with his fortune, but I really can’t stand the cookie-cutter approach to life.  The one-size-fits-all, just add water, formulaic oversimplification. 

Some examples of real community, imho: friends who find comfort in a night of watching movies in your sweatpants (especially 6-hour movies involving Colin Firth, woo!); bailing one another out when you have car trouble (this mostly applies if you’re friends with JG and LT); friends who bring you Frosties and coffees; friends who are willing to indulge me in my overanalyzation of my personal life (or lack thereof); friends who are there after the wake’s over or the plane leaves.  What does not constitute community, imho: busying ourselves with a p.r. campaign to the point where we’re more concerned with what the outside world thinks of us, than those closest to us.

The small group’s been great, I really hope it continues, I hope we’re able to truly explore what real, radical, counter-cultural community looks like.  I guess what I’m saying is, the next time someone tells me we’re doing something for 40 days, I’m building an ark.