"The Gathering" 1000 Days of Community

Picture: A bunch of our children posing during our neighborhood "Gathering"

As some of you know, The Gathering is not experimenting with the idea of being in close community. We're in our third year of living in close connection with friends and neighbors. Mimi and I were so frustrated a few years ago. Because we were deeply involved with our local church, we noticed a polarizing effect. We were not close to our neighbors. Although pleasant niceties would be exchanged, you always felt like you had the plague. This is what Pastor Doug talks about when he has to divulge to the other strangers in his golfing foursome that he is "a Pastor". People panic. Neighbors become more defensive and less apt to open up. If we're honest we don't let our guard down either, do we?

So a handful of us who were of the same mind just decide to have church at our house. We had no intentions of building a church, but being the church. Our Saturday evenings are filled with great music, food, drink, scripture, sacred communion, tears, and laughter. More often then not, our evenings turn into early mornings. There are evenings where the holiest thing we can do is open up lawn chairs and start a fire pit in the middle of our Cul-de-Sac. The Jesus dialogue spills. We become closer as people who follow, and people who don't. We live so connected to one another that we simply cannot hide our flaws - we either help each other deal with them or love one another in spite of them.

The other night, I was seeing our last friend out of the house. As I closed the door and turned around, I paused. With a slight shake of the head, almost in disbelief, I whispered to God "There's nothing else I'd rather be doing with my time..."

- Jeff and Mimi