Cohousing - The New Christian Communes

[Guest guest]

The following is a new form of Christian Commune, Cohousing. This is something that is quick to establish than a farm commune. It is less work but can develop to farm commune if there are resources such as land. ISKCON Hare Krishna Movement have various forms of community. There are in fact Cohousing especially in Florida and also in Mayapur and Vrindavan, India. There is choice then available for devotees, whether to choose to be in rural community commune or cohousing. The Christian community is quite versatile and developed and they have various cohouse communities. Cohousing is a formal establishment and not the same as having a having an devotee apartments mixed with other not in the Hare Krishna faith. Srila Prabhupada wants this COOPERATION between devotees. Through Cohousing various choices become to develop the Hare Krishna Movement. There is more focus. There is below some common ideas on the cause of having more cohousing.

 

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BEING THE CHURCH SHOULD MEAN MORE THAN SHOWING UP AT A

BUILDING ONCE A WEEK.

 

 

 

Tom Sine

 

"I'm going to church." Not for many generations has that

statement inspired as little enthusiasm as it does today. And I'm

not talking about the notoriously unchurched segments of our

culture, growing though they are, but about Christians. As my wife

Christine and I work with the emerging generation of Christians in

Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Canada, and the United

States, we are finding that they have at least one thing in common:

a hunger for a church that is more than just someplace you "go to."

While some North American congregations spend vast sums on

expanding physical plants, their next generation is asking, "Is this

all there is?"

 

These young people are unwilling to let modernity arrange most of

the furniture of life, while faith is reduced to a trivial diversion on

the edges. They don't want to compartmentalize their faith--even if

it's a large, well-furnished compartment with an indoor swimming

pool and a food court. They want a church that is actually

connected to the rest of lives--or better yet, an church that actually

shapes their lives.

 

In Oakland, California, one young group of believers has taken that

seriously--enough to start a very different kind of building program.

 

In 1985 The United Methodist Church assigned the Rev. David

McKeithen to Rockridge United Methodist Church, a congregation

that had voted to disband because of declining membership in a

changing neighborhood. Instead, McKeithen gradually drew a

handful of new members who effectively planted a new church in

the same building. Drawing much of their inspiration from Church of

the Saviour in Washington, D.C., they gathered a new congregation

dedicated to a common life that goes far beyond Sunday morning

worship. Like Church of the Saviour in its heyday, Rockridge expects

each member to choose a "mission group," which typically meets

one night a week for nurture and discipleship, and spends another

night in shared ministry in Rockridge's neighborhood.

 

Essential to the Church of the Saviour's mission group model is the

sometimes-lengthy process of discerning a corporate "call,"

something that God is clearly drawing that particular group to do

together in mission. At Rockridge, one small group within the church

began to explore the problem, familiar to many urban churches, of

how to maintain a truly indigenous and creative presence within the

church's neighborhood. In 1996, their search led these eleven

members to covenant together to create one of the first Christian

cohousing communities in the nation.

 

"Cohousing" doesn't mean "commune." Those of us who

came of age before the eighties remember any number of

experiments in the free-wheeling days of the Jesus

Movement--communities of young, idealistic, and somewhat naðve

believers, often involving a lifetime commitment and a common

purse. Most of these experiments died out, sometimes with

disastrous results, though a few, like Chicago's legendary Jesus

People USA and Reba Place, are still going strong. In retrospect, it's

not surprising that this model of Christian community was beyond

the reach of most of those who tried it. Joining a Christian commune

is a little like getting married to a crowd for a lifetime.

 

Meanwhile, though, across the Atlantic ocean some Danish citizens,

who weren't religiously motivated, were creating a different,

somewhat more flexible model of common life. They called it

cohousing. Those Danish communities, most of which still exist

twenty-five years later, involve a multi-unit dwelling in which all

residents have their own private unit, along with a common building

that typically includes a dining hall which serves several common

meals a week, plus a laundry, a children's play area, and a garden.

 

In 1988 Kathryn McCamant, Charles Durnett, and Ellen Hertzman

wrote a book called Cohousing that sparked a similar movement in

North America. By all accounts the cohousing movement is enjoying

exponential growth, primarily among social progressives. Several

dozen cohousing communities have been constructed around the

country, and some estimate that 150 are on the drawing board.

The movement has its own journal, CoHousing, and, naturally, a

website (www.cohousing.org).

 

After studying various cohousing models, the five families and one

unmarried person in the mission group purchased a quarter acre of

land near their church in 1997. They started meeting together

weekly to design a new way to be the church in a multi-cultural

urban community. The Temescal Cohousing Project, named after

Rockridge UMC's neighborhood in Oakland, was born.

 

By March 2000 not only were there finished buildings, there

were twenty-three people (including nine children) hosting a

high-energy celebration for the whole neighborhood. Bright yellow,

rust brown, and tan two-story units festooned with multi-colored

streamers welcomed neighbors and friends to an opening

ceremony, complete with an appearance by the mayor.

 

The Temescal Cohousing Project looks very different from the

suburban communities which several of its new residents used to

call home. Clusters of buildings are set on a quarter acre in one of

Oakland's older neighborhoods. In the center is a large common

green where kids can play and families gather. Next to the green is

an old barn which the teens in the community have already made

into their own space. On the other side of the green is a common

dining room where the members share meals together twice a

week.

 

Above the dining room is one of the project's nine residences. Two

more two-story units sit on the southwest side of the development.

Sharing the street with them is an old two-story farm house that

members have completely remodeled as a part of the complex. Its

downstairs unit, rather than being owned by one of the mission

group's families, is a two-bedroom "transition home" for families

coming off welfare. In front of the newly constructed units, the

community's members have already planted their first vegetable

garden, one thousand feet square, surrounded by semi-dwarf fruit

trees. (Cohousing in California does have its unique attractions.)

 

These young urban pilgrims believe that being the church should

mean more than showing up at a building once a week. For them,

church means a living faith community within a neighborhood. Their

vision for that community is three-dimensional: being present for

one another's daily lives and formation in Christ, offering the

presence of Christ to their neighbors, and being good stewards of

the earth. Or, as their vision statement puts it, "We live in God's

creation. We are to love God, each other, our neighbors and care

for God's creation."

 

The Temescal Cohousing Project brings to mind Rodney Clapp's

argument in Family at the Crossroads that biblically speaking, our

"first family" is not the biological family but our extended family in

Jesus Christ. They have been meeting weekly for over three years

discussing what it will mean to be family together. When I met with

them shortly before they moved in, it was clear they already knew

each other very well--from their notions of family life and parenting

styles to their faith struggles and hopes in this new, and risky,

venture.

 

Prior to joining this group, Tom Prince felt that, "The circles of my life

were pulling me apart." He worked in one part of Oakland, lived in

another part, and went to church in yet another part. The

cohousing community was an answer to his prayers for a more

integrated life--now he walks with his son to work every day as a

reading specialist in the nearby Emerson Elementary School. The

church is also within walking distance. The circles of life are now

pulling together.

 

Mark Lau Branson, the leader of this process, observed that for

many young people he knows, home is a refuge from the stress of

work and the pressures of the consumer culture. The Temescal

group is trying to fashion a new kind of family, where members

have much more time to be present to one another, nurture one

another in their spiritual formation, support one another in

parenting, counter the bombardment from the commercial culture,

and spend more time in celebration.

 

The first beneficiaries of this way of life may well be the children.

Between TV, video games, and the Internet, researchers have

recently estimated the average child is on-line thirty-seven hours a

week and is assailed by over three thousand advertisements a day.

Anyone who thinks that one hour of Sunday school a week can

counter the "spiritual formation" being offered by the global

corporate culture is fooling themselves. The parents in the

Rockridge cohousing community, though, are supporting one

another in taking back control of media in their children's lives. Even

more, these parents are teaching their children to be "culture

jammers," decoding and questioning the propaganda of the

consumer culture.

 

The cohousing initiative will make a difference for its

neighbors, too. Previously most of the cohousing members were

commuting in from the suburbs, trying to be a positive presence in

Rockridge's neighborhood. This involvement has been substantial

by most churches' standards: in recent years members of the group

have offered tutoring and computer education classes for the kids

from Emerson Elementary to support Tom's work there in reading

remediation. But moving in has made an immeasurable difference.

For one thing, Emerson is now their local school, not just one they

come to "help." Rather than home schooling their own children,

these Christians are committed to transforming Emerson for all the

children that go there. The two-bedroom transition home that is

part of the community is another example of the Temescal

Cohousing group's intimate involvement with the needs of their

new, literal, neighbors.

 

Last year the Temescal Cohousing group hosted a block party for

the entire neighborhood, including a garage sale and an art

installation. To honor their neighbors' pasts, they played videos of

elders sharing stories from the early days of the Temescal

neighborhood. Local blues and rock bands provided the music, and

the community provided plenty of food. The art installation created

by one of the cohousing group's residents, Leiko Yamamoto Pech,

received the Artist of the Year Award from the City of Oakland.

 

"As we plan our building we should allow God to reveal himself to

us ... and carefully consider how we might cultivate this plot of

earth," says one description of their work. Each of the new units

has solar paneling on the roofs, which members estimate will

provide eighty-five percent of electrical needs. All the construction

materials reflect their environmental sensitivity. Efficient on-demand

water heaters circulate hot water through coils in the concrete

floor. All the new units are designed to take advantage of passive

solar energy to help provide heat in the winters. And members

hope to grow the bulk of their vegetables in their organic garden.

 

Absorbed in the immediate challenges of launching their

new community when I met with them, this small group seemed

to have little sense of how much hope their experiment offers to

the rest of us. In a world of growing pressure to conform to the

new global super-mall, they are redefining both "home" and

"church," and bringing them together. Instead of allowing modern

culture to dictate most of the furniture of their lives (forty- to

eighty-hour work weeks, single family detached housing, hours of

commuting), they have raised the bar for how faith can shape a

life--or a church. For the Temescal Cohousing Project is also a model

of a new kind of church planting, which establishes not just a

building but an incarnational sample of God's new order.

 

The colored streamers have been taken off the homes at the

Temescal Cohousing Project now, and not all the seeds in the

vegetable garden have even put up their first little shoots. The

seed being planted in Oakland is very small. But it has the potential

to grow. It is the seed of a postmodern church that is less a place

to go to than a place to go from--a home for the people of Jesus

Christ in a rapidly changing global future.