merefaith: two friends on pilgrimage

The work load at Koinonia has been steady if not terribly creative as of late. The very interesting projects at the beginning have given way to very methodical and monotonous – although no doubt necessary – tasks. The two main maintenance operations have been a new paint job on the exterior of one of the campus houses and some cleaning and painting in one of the pecan plants so that it will pass the health inspection. On occasion I have also ventured out onto the land for soil samples and the sawing and clearing away of fallen pecan branches.

Perhaps the most interesting work has been in helping Sanders and other members of the “Peace Action Team,” which is really an entity independent of Koinonia and includes such members of the broader community as Matt, the local Mennonite pastor, and John, the director of Prison and Jail Project. The main effort of PAT has been focused on getting the local high school to comply with federal regulations concerning personal student information and military recruiter access. The “No Child Left Behind” Act stipulates that schools must turn over contact information for students upon request – that includes everything from home phone numbers to class schedules. However, another government act stipulates that schools must inform parents of this access and provide the opportunity to opt out should they or their children want their information to remain private. Most parents are probably not aware of the level of access and most schools are probably not aware that they are required to present the choice to parents. The Americus-Sumter Country High School certainly wasn't aware. Sanders met with the principal, a 16-year military veteran, who immediately decided to put “opt out” forms in the student handbook and who has been very willing to make clear to parents and students their right to privacy. We are thankful that the principal has not responded with grumbling or resistance. We were also invited to have a presence at the school's open house and hand out information about recruiters in schools and privacy rights. Long after I leave Koinonia, meanwhile, the Peace Action Team will expand its work through offering a peace scholarship to students, holding military recruiters accountable in their work (like any sales pitch, recruitment materials don't tell the whole story), and encouraging students to explore alternative options to military service if they (quite rightly) are hesitant about being trained to kill.

But of course all work and no play makes Chris a very dull boy. Movie viewings remain the number one leisure activity of choice, and several of us have become addicted to a BBC miniseries adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel “Bleak House.” The final set of episodes from Netflix is supposed to arrive in the next couple of days so that we can complete our Victorian adventure before Beth and I depart. But we have also celebrated life together in more exuberant ways, like Jo's birthday party last week in which we dressed up, hobnobbed in very classy style...and then danced to reggae music!

Emotionally and spiritually, the parallel processes of saying hello and goodbye have become increasingly significant. After a summer apart Kelly and I worked through the joyous difficulty of reconnecting when she visited me at Koinonia last week. This coming Friday I will have the privilege of officiating the wedding of one of my college friends, Jared. For a few short days the LC gang will run through the complete cycle from hello to goodbye – or at least to “see you later” until the next wedding brings us together. But before I can get to Atlanta this weekend I must say goodbye to the life I have known this summer – the trees, the heat, the work, the people. I can already feel myself moving away – I guess something in me helps me to make gradual shifts so that I'm not caught off guard when it all comes to an end. But I don't quite know just yet what Koinonia will mean to me as I leave this place and after I'm looking back through time and distance. But I know that it has been good to be here, and surely God has readied the steps where my foot will tread next.

Labels: Koinonia

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, August 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

Nearly two weeks ago I left Koinonia Farm to attend the annual national meeting of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This year it was in Washington, DC – a rather pricey place for graduate students, and more than questionable if the Gospel calls us first to serve among the poor and needy, rather than the powerful and complacent. The experience there was a mixed bag, as is the general rule for any large gathering. I have to admit that it was “historic” that the the closing meeting of the CBF was held jointly as the opening meeting of the American Baptist Churches, USA. Yes, no two Baptist bodies have met together in a long time. But the event was fairly spoiled for me because some of the typical plagues that concern me in Baptist life were on full display that evening. Nevertheless, the trip was a refreshing break for the most part, and I enjoyed the good company of friends and classmates from Duke who were there as well. The workshops I attended were generally informative and helpful. It's also always a pleasure to share any time with our fearless leader from Duke's Baptist House of Studies, Dr. Freeman.

Before I left for Washington I felt the urge for a break from Koinonia. I don't think it has anything to do with the community per se, but I did want to take a step back and take stock of what I have been doing. Both the work and the community lifestyle offer certain challenges as well as rewards and so it seemed right to gain some perspective from a distance. Most thankfully, the break seemed to produce a renewed vigor in me. I highly enjoyed myself this past week on the farm. The work hasn't been especially stimulating, and while communal activities were more common this week, they did not create the good feeling. I really don't know what clicked, but I felt particularly motivated each morning to get up and get going, and I looked forward to each day knowing that I would put in some solid work with my hands. It would be really nice if this were a permanent shift in my approach to life on the farm, but more than likely my mood will shift according to the quite normal rhythms that we all experience.

A couple of weeks ago the interns watched an old documentary about Koinonia that was made in the early 1980s. At the closing of the documentary a voice-over of a Clarence Jordan address played across scenes of community members at work. In this recording Clarence tells his audience how the KKK came around and tried to get the community to leave by offering to buy the farm. He then recalls how the property look when he and Martin England came to buy it in 1942. The farm house was dilapidated, the barns were falling apart, and the fields were scarred by first misuse and then later disuse. Clarence describes looking out over the wounded farm and it is as if he is hearing the land cry out to him, “Heal me!” He then recalls the creation story from Genesis and suggests that if humans are made from the soil then to work closely with it should be a deeply spiritual exercise. Clarence returns to the decision posed by the KKK offer. “Sell the farm? You might as well sell your own mother.”

I may not be enough of a farmer (or a preacher) yet to resonate fully with Clarence's eloquent words. Koinonia hasn't quite become my mother. It's still very hot and the gnats are still very plentiful. Community life is a blessing but we're not a bunch of Mother Theresas here. Yet I have heard the cicada choruses sing and I have seen the pecan trees clap their hands in the wind. I have shared in long conversations and played silly games with children. Tomorrow I plan on waking up with a smile on my face.

Labels: Koinonia

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, July 08, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

The second week at Koinonia upped the workload and we began to get acclimated to full days on the job and in the sun. We interns replaced part of the bakery roof, dug trenches, and worked on irrigation in the pecan orchards. Tuesday saw some welcome rain for farmers in the area and we spent the day baking bread and bagging pecan and peanut products for sale. Unfortunately, Tuesday was also the day that we had originally scheduled to get up at 5 am so that we could work on the roof before it got too hot and then quit after lunch. But this is a farm and we must accept that our work remains ever at the mercy of nature's whims.

Spiritually, I believe that my week has been beneficial in pushing me to more prayerfully seek out my own willingness to serve as God calls. This Wednesday evening I went with a community member to a church in town for a viewing and discussion on the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” The discussion terribly frustrated me, for when the moderator asked what our responses should be in situations like this, the other people gave answers not as Christians, but as Americans. “Write our ambassador to the UN” and such. The discussion evolved to talk about the character of “our society” (again, the American society, not the global Christian fellowship) and concerns about security. Nothing was said about how we live out the Gospel as the Church until I spoke. I do believe that the Christian response to a situation like Rwanda is different, however. It cannot be intervention by force of arms, but the kind of risky immersion that allows for witness by word and deed to the love that is stronger than all fear and hatred. Such immersion is at the heart of groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams, Word Made Flesh, and a number of intentional communities. But later that night I concluded that it would be a lot harder to call congregations to such an openness of discipleship if I had not myself abandoned comfort or security in pursuit of faithfulness. Last summer I thought about what it would be like, say, to run off to Lebanon. Perhaps this summer God may begin showing the way to the next step after the mere entertaining of ideas.

This openness may be the end result of what Clarence Jordan called “incarnational evangelism.” For Clarence, the Incarnation made good news a fact, and Pentecost made the Church the effective visible body through which Jesus operates in the world today. Commenting on 1 John in a sermon, Jordan asked,

How can you evangelize except from the standpoint of the incarnation? How can you go and say to people, “That which we would like to know – that we declare unto you. That which is not a reality among us, we declare unto you – a brotherhood which we cannot practice.” How dare we preach, how dare we evangelize, from any standpoint except that of the incarnation!

In other words, if there is to be genuine evangelism, the Christian must fully embrace that which we so readily excuse through misuse of “metaphor” and “context.” These are both important for appropriately understanding the Bible, but Clarence knew full well that they create a sanitized and harmless Christianity when they make discipleship less than complete. But perhaps the greater danger, and the greater tragedy, comes not from explaining away such commands as “love your enemies” or “go,” but knowing exactly what they say and never taking up their challenge.

The tragedy of Rwanda only deepens for followers of Jesus Christ when we hear that 80% of the country in 1994 was Christian by profession. Before the genocide that land was considered a great success story of missions. After the genocide it became a monument to the failure of shallow, numbers-driven revivalism. It is tempting to blame the missionaries, but in reality they failed to truly convert Rwanda because they came from churches that themselves needed new conversions. The way forward is both simple and difficult – it is to practice the brotherhood we preach and live the real faith which, as Clarence Jordan put it, “is not belief in spite of evidence but a life in scorn of the consequences.” And for that to happen evangelism will always begin with ourselves.

Labels: Koinonia

Posted by Chris Schelin at Sunday, June 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

I have now spent about half a week getting acquainted with the current work and community life of Koinonia Farm and there is still plenty of orientation to go. Since Monday each day has been divided in two, with half of it consisting of a a sit-down introduction to some aspects of Koinonia and the other half devoted to working in one particular area. So far we have helped with administration, the bakery, and the actual farmland. Over the remaining two days the interns will assist with maintenance and with the Koinonia Community Outreach Center.

First and foremost I should explain more about the history and philosophy of Koinonia. It all started with the vision of Clarence Jordan (pronounced “jer-den”), a Georgia native who studied agriculture before sensing a call to ministry and earning a PhD in Greek New Testament at the Southern Baptist Seminary. Clarence quickly came to recognize the “radical” nature of the Gospel when it is fully lived out, and sought to found a Christian community with a way of life that would stand as an alternative to materialism, racism, and militarism. He and his wife, together with another fairly young couple, bought some neglected land and established Koinonia in 1942.

Clarence understood Jesus Christ as calling for “partners” to join in the Kingdom of God, or, as Clarence called it, the “God Movement.” Deep in the segregated South this partnership would transgress social codes as Koinonia deliberately opened the door to African-Americans for community membership and made sure they received equal financial standing. For the first ten years or so the surrounding population in Sumter County viewed Clarence and Koinonia as weird but mostly harmless. Perhaps the most ardent segregationists simply refused to believe that black and white sat together at the dinner table on a Georgia farm.

After Brown vs. Topeka in 1954, however, traditionalist whites reacted forcefully and violently to any threat to their “cherished way of life,” while others accused Koinonia of being Communist. The KKK rallied in Sumter County and motorcaded to Koinonia with 90 cars, hoping to intimidate Clarence into accepting a very low offer for the farm and leave. Koinonia's roadside produce stands were firebombed and drive-by gunshots barely missed the heads of children inside the farm homes. Beginning in the late 1950s a local economic boycott kept the community on the verge of annihilation for nearly a decade, and one Americus merchant who dared to sell to the farm lost his store to a bomb.

During the 60s Millard and Linda Fuller came to stay at Koinonia and an idea suggested by Clarence became the catalyst for their creation of Habitat for Humanity, which is now headquartered in downtown Americus, Georgia. Jordan passed away in 1969 but the farm carried on. During the 1990s the community became organized more like a corporation and was seen by the rest of the county as a kind of social service agency. The members now consider that a regrettable period and are striving to reaffirm Koinonia as a spiritually-centered community that can be, in Clarence's words, “a demonstration plot for the God Movement.”

Koinonia will identify itself as an “intentional Christian community.” The phrase sounds unusual when one first hears it – most people intend community in one way or another, and members of a church choose to be there on purpose. This term tries to describe a community made up of people self-consciously seeking to live in close connection and proximity, share resources, disciple and enable one another, eat and fellowship together frequently, and model a way of life that pushes back against consumerism and individualism. Imagine a monastery with both genders and no celibacy requirement, but still possessing common work, vision, and living space. The devaluation of money is still prominent – one Koinonian has told me that at least technically she lives below poverty level. The similarities to the old orders are strong enough that the current movement of intentional communities is sometimes dubbed “the new monasticism.” Now the Church has periodically seen efforts at renewal take the form of intentional communities: the Jerusalem Church in Acts 2, the original monastic orders, the Bruderhofs and Hutterite communities of Germanic Europe, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's secret Finkenwalde seminary in Nazi Germany. At 65 years of age Koinonia happens to be a kind of forerunner to this latest effort at restoring authentic community.

So this is some of the history and the vision that drew me to Koinonia and that inspires its permanent members. I look forward to the regular rhythms of daily prayer, the spiritual companionship, and (I hope) even the hard work! I also especially hope that the next few months will be a time of some reflection and insight that I can take with me into pastoral ministry as I seek to help churches live out faithfulness to the gospel through communion, peace, and discipleship.

Labels: Koinonia

Posted by Chris Schelin at Wednesday, June 06, 2007 | Permalink | Comments

I have arrived at the Koinonia community, Clarence Jordan's 65-year old Christian farm cooperative in southern Georgia. So far my internship has involved weeding, eating, and destroying worthless old paper records. Plus there was the behind-the-scenes tour, the hornet sting on my pinkie toe in my first few minutes outside after unpacking, and the numerous mosquito bites, fire ant bites, briar thorn pricks, and other elements of God's green, good, and sometime annoying creation. What shall become of this city boy in the red clay? Stay tuned!

Labels: Koinonia

Posted by Chris Schelin at Monday, June 04, 2007 | Permalink | Comments