Matthew, David, Catherine and I got to go to Minneapolis this weekend for The Common Root 09 conference. The Common Root is a network of Anabaptist leaning people/communities who share a passion for pursuing the way of peace/justice/simplicity in our ever changing world. We flew out Friday morning around 5:30 and got into Minneapolis with the full day ahead of us. We rode the light rail up into the downtown area and walked around a little and ate lunch. Then we rode the bus over to Faith Mennonite Church where the conference was.
When we got there we got to meet our hosts Kim and Stacy who are amazing ladies. They, and their community house, were fantastic hosts. They were gracious and fun and really made the whole trip very enjoyable for us. Thank you Kim and Stacy!
Friday night we heard from Tom and Christine Sine(of Mustard Seed Associates) about church/community/empire type issues. They laid out a good foundation for the weekend and deal with broad ranging topics. They gave some of the basics from Tom’s book The New Conspirators. They then talked about these trying times we live in and what communities can do to help. They moved on to talk about how the global consumer capitalist culture has taken over our imaginations and what it would look like to re-imagine a lot of different parts of life. They finished up with a good foundation of what Shalom is(peace/wholeness from the biblical perspective) and discussed why Resurrection was so important to the early christians and why it should be important to us.
I went to a breakout session that Christine led after that about spiritual practices within communities. She laid a good foundation for why we do group spiritual practices and some helpful practices that they have found. We also had some sharing from all of us about practices that have been beneficial.
This is a good interlude to discuss who all was there. I knew of a number of different communities that would be represented but I was really blown away by how amazing all the different people we met were. In my normal life when I talk about my desire to live in community it seems strange. The way they live at Gabriel House is abnormal in my circles of life. But at this conference living in community was the norm and those of us who don’t(yet) live in community seemed like the minority. It was great to hear from a lot of different people about all the different things they do with their lives. So much time/energy is freed up by living simply and sharing that it enables them to do things that I don’t have time for. It was inspiring.
Saturday morning we had a breakout session first before a main speaker. I went to the session on hospitality led by Kim and Stacy. They did a fantastic job of facilitating a conversation with everyone in the room. It was inspiring and challenging to hear how a lot people have arranged their lives in ways to allow them to take in people in need and share their lives openly. There was a lot of healthy discussion about boundaries and how best to serve people.
The first main session of the day we got to hear from Greg Boyd(pastor of Woodland Hills Church and author of The Myth of a Christian Nation)about the Kingdom of God and nonviolence. He told his story and preached to the choir a bit about how nationalism has invaded the church. The main thrust I got from his talk was that the Kingdom of God looks like Jesus and that that(looking like Jesus) should be the indicator of if something is of the Kingdom. He also gave a little apologetic for being affiliated with the Mennonite Church.
We then broke for lunch and then came back to hear Carol Rose(co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams) do a main session. She talked about what it takes to do the type of stuff that they do with CPT. She also had us do some roleplaying acting out a confrontation that Jesus had and doing some subtle training on how to respond to conflict. Carol is an amazing woman and someone who I came away very impressed with and inspired by.
Our next breakout session time was next and I went to Carol’s session about taking the peacemaking of CPT and using it with your community for your communities. We did some sharing and some active learning and it made some stuff about my lifestyle hit home. I came away very challenged to make some lifestyle chances to enable me to be more of a peacemaker.
We then finished up with the final speaker of the conference Jin Kim(pastor of a multi-racial/multi-cultural church called Church of All Nations) . One big thing that was mentioned in passing but never dealt with in the conference(before Jin) was issues of race and culture. It was a conference full of progressive white people wanting to make the world a better place but race issues were an elephant in the room at times. Jin talked about race. In fact, he talked more frankly about race and culture issues than anyone I have ever heard. Very challenging and very needed.
I had a really good time this weekend. It was challenging and inspiring. Thanks to everyone involved for making this event happen.
