“Coordinating a community’s practices through good governance helps to make its way of life clear, visible, and viable.”
— Larry L. Rasmussen
Thoughts and questions to help you consider this practice
This practice takes on life through roles and rituals, laws and agreements — indeed, through the whole assortment of shared commitments and institutional arrangements that order common life. In one sense, then, shaping communities is not just a single practice of its own. It is the practice that provides the choreography for all the other practices of a community or society.
Life is sometimes a mess. To flourish, we have to decide how we assemble, how we divide life's basic goods, and how we will record our history. In order for communities to flourish, they must be ordered, cared for, led. The practice of governance is the soil in which all the practices of a community are rooted and nourished.
When have you experienced a community that was poorly governed? What changes in ordering, caring, and leadership were called for? When have you experienced healthy community? In what ways did this community create a space for your gifts and talents?
Christians look to Jesus as an example of leadership, and the Bible provides models for life-giving governance. Jesus constituted his community around power turned upside down. What message does Jesus' style of egalitarian discipleship suggest about models for leadership?
Both Jesus and the first Christians embraced Judaism's sense of a covenant relationship with the one God. What covenantal understandings were present in the early church? What Jewish practices did the early church eventually decide to give up? What tensions attended the faith community as it made its decisions?
How did the "new world order" of the early church change when Christianity gained status as the universal imperial faith? At what point in a community's development does stability win out over flexibility?
In what ways does your faith community reflect the alternative community of the early church? In whose hands does effective power reside? What kind is it? How is it used, and to what ends? Who benefits and who pays? Who frames the issues and directs the kind of attention they get? How does information flow?
At best, leaders are choreographers to help people identify the challenges they face and untangle the issues. What leaders do you know who are able to clarify the purpose, values, and goals of a group?
The perennial Christian strategy is to gather folks, break bread, and tell stories. We can adapt and create governance and leadership practices, then, by answering basic questions: What shape will the gathering take? Who breaks the bread — all or some? Who tells the stories? Whom do our practices welcome to the table? How do we show in our life together that social distinctions based on race, class, and gender don't count here?
Are guests sometimes called to be hosts? Do we encourage each participant to find gifts for meeting the hungers of the world? Does the organization of general community life encourage leadership to emerge from the foot of the table?
"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."
— I Corinthians 12:4-7
"A dispute also arose among the disciples as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But Jesus said to them, 'The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them...But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table, or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.'"
— Luke 22:24-27
God of nimble fingers,
at the flowering of creation
you took a mess of mud and shaped it
into your image:
male and female.
So take this ball of heaving, resisting clay —
this messy clay of all of us together,
and fashion of it a living table
where all may gather, be fed, and tell stories.
Craft it for long wear more than beauty.
Mold it for health more than power.
Set this table with space enough for elbow room
space for talent
space for guests.
Shape our feet of clay
into dance;
Shape our knees
into bending;
Shape our hands
into clasping;
Shape our water-logged lungs
into chorus;
Shape our chins
into upthrust resolve;
Shape our lips
into smile.
Take this ball of clay,
and fashion of it a living table
to which the dinner bell calls, we eat, and tell how things are.
Craft it for sturdiness more than smoothness.
Mold it for hosting more than for herding.
Set this table with just enough space for brushing skins
space for accepting gifts
space for the Guest.
Amen.
— Lani Wright, Cottage Grove, Oregon
"Gather us in...the lost and forsaken, gather us in...the blind and the lame.
Call to us now, and we shall awaken, we shall arise at the sound of our name."
Text and Music: Marty Haugen
Text and Music (c) 1982 G.I.A. Publications, Inc.
"In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north;
But one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth."
Text: John Oxenham
"For we are strangers no more, but members of one family;
strangers no more, but part of one humanity..."
Text: Kenneth I. Morse
Text (c) 1979 Church of the Brethren General Board
Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge.
Ideas of the Christian church are changing, and Letty Russell envisions its future as partnership and sharing for all members around a common table of hospitality.
This book presents a theory of learning that starts with the assumption that engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we get to know what we know and by which we become who we are.
Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet — the 20th-anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today’s fractured America.
In this classic adaptation of William Golding’s novel, a planeload of schoolboys is stranded on a tropical island. They’ve got food and water; all that’s left is to govern themselves peacefully until they’re rescued. “After all,” says choir leader Jack, “We’re English. We’re the best in the world at everything!” Unfortunately, living peacefully is not as easy as it seems. Analyze how “community” functions under these extraordinary conditions.
A homily given by Dorothy Bass, based on Acts 2:43-47, at Valparaiso University Chapel, November 9, 2010.
This sermon based on Acts 2:43-47 and I Corinthians 12:12-26 was preached at the Wellesley Congregational Church on February 28, 1999.
Mindy McGarrah Sharp compiled this companion study guide for the book “In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as a Spiritual Practice,” written by Bonnie Miller-McLemore.