House Deadline!

For some time now Micah 6 Community has been working with Grace Centers of Hope to try to find a house that could be the beginning place for our intentional community.  We have seen a few houses come and go for various reasons: not God’s timing, not our preferred location, etc.

As we have been anticipating a house we have begun our fundraising campaign 1000by20 which would give us a starting budget for a house, gardens and other costs involved with starting up an intentional community.

I am happy to say that now Grace Centers and Micah 6 have agreed on a house and purchase date!

This means that by June 1^st Micah 6 Community needs to raise $7200 to move into the house that we have selected. That means that we are looking for 360 of our friends to donate $20 each by the end of this month.

Thank you for the love and support you’ve already given, and be in prayer about whether or not you can be one of those 360 friends.

For more information, click here.

 

Finding Teachers

Life has been pretty busy lately.  I have been working hard to get Micah 6 Community off the ground and really define our place and mission in the great city of Pontiac.  I have also been working a lot, spending time with my lovely girlfriend, and driving all over the state to meet new folks who are interested in what we are doing here.

 

A Right You Have to Earn

As I have now been talking about on this blog for about a week, I am getting ready to start an intentional community in Pontiac.

I have spent a lot of time in conversation with friends and mentors about what that is going to look like and had become a little discouraged.

 

Micah 6 Community: Missiology

Over the decades much ink has been spilled and theories cast for how evangelism is best done.  It seems that everyone has a method or model that worked well in one situation that they will often prescribe for all situations.  The three of us have our favorites; favorite teachers, writers, methods, models and suggestions.  But we are also aware that any success we have will not be because we followed a model or because we were such great evangelists that people found the Gospel irresistible.  Our success will come from a posture of humility that we will hold as we are bounced around like pinballs as God leads us to opportunity.  Pontiac is a place unlike any other that we have been.  Sure there are similarities to be drawn and relative geography that we could use to make generalizations, but those will surely fall short in practice as we try to live intentionally for the community around us.

That being said, we want to reflect on some simple truths and move forward from there.

 

Micah 6 Community: The House

If you are just now coming in on the conversation, please check out the preceding posts leading up to this one, here.

–

The phrase “Intentional Community” is full of hipness and ambiguity.  I will try to clear up some of the vagueness about what we are going there to do.

 

Micah 6 Community: The City

Below is a rough sketch of the city we are planning on putting Micah 6 Community.  This research was put together to help explain where and why we believe we need to move into Pontiac.

–

Pontiac, MI

Population
The current population of Pontiac is just under 60,000 people.  This represents a loss of 10% of its population in the past ten years, a statistic not uncommon here in Southeast Michigan.[1]

Employment
Unemployment is at 25%.[2]  Much of this unemployment is tied to the struggling auto industry and the closing of the main Pontiac plant, which devastated the community.[3]

 

Micah 6 Community: Values

Greetings,  Thanks for stopping by!  If you’re a bit confused about what I am talking about here, read the posts building up to this one here.

–

At Micah 6 Community we hold five core-values as essential to guiding our decisions and organizational direction:

• Empathy
• Empowerment
• Hospitality
• Expansion
• Discipleship

Empathy.  There is a fundamental difference between Empathy and Sympathy.  Sympathy suggests that you feel sorry for a person from a distance, but are not experiencing the same feelings as the person you’re observing.  Empathy on the other hand implies that you’re right there with them.  Jesus did not stay in heaven and sympathize for humanity.  Instead, he came to earth and felt the same feelings and lived through the same struggles that humanity lives with daily.  He lowered himself to empathize with people.  Similarly, it would be one thing to live outside of Pontiac, not experiencing their hurts, struggles, joys and victories.  It is another thing to move into the city, feeling the same pressures and experiencing life together.

Empowerment.  Typical structures have shown that giving a hand-out can be easier mechanized than spending time with individuals helping them to cultivate their own gifts.  This can be seen in a variety of ways: welfare checks sent through the mail, soup kitchens that resemble assembly lines; heads down bowls in front of them.  This keeps people coming for hand-outs rather than teaching skills, harnessing passion and creating Christ-followers.  Through teaching skills and spending time with individuals who want to learn, we begin to show them that there is a way of life that is more humanizing and worth living.

Hospitality. Jesus said that his desire for his followers was that they would be known by their love for others.  Often Christians are known for other things—their buildings, their politics, their bumper-stickers.  None of these things are what Jesus had in mind.  Our community is committed to showing radical hospitality to anyone who needs it.  This means that our door will always be open, our dinner table has a seat for anyone who wants to dine with us and that we will always make arrangements for those wanting to come see the work that we are doing first hand.

Expansion.  Southeast Michigan is in rough shape.  In many ways it was the first in to the current economic crisis and will be the last out.  The entire landscape has been shaped by it.  Whole sections of cities are completely empty where neighborhoods used to thrive.  Pontiac is only a small part of the struggle.  Every city and maybe every city block needs a group of people who are willing to live in service to their neighbors.  We hope that as we get our organization off the ground that others will look to us as a model and hope to create similar communities in different locations from Pontiac, to Detroit, to Mount Clemens to the end of the thumb.

Discipleship. As stated before, if we do not share the love and message of Jesus with others we will count our efforts as a failure.  Through our various forms of outreach and service to the community we hope to engage in deeper conversations and activities with those that we serve.  We hope that through these relationships we can enable others to go and disciple others.  We hope to be a community that lays down our lives for our neighbors and invites them all to walk with us in learning more about Jesus Christ.  This means that any activity we do is an opportunity for teaching others.  From planning a Bible study to growing vegetables, we hope to bring our neighbors along in those activities in order to train them up to go out and duplicate the work of Micah 6 Community in other places.

–

Follow our work more closely:
Facebook.com/micah6community
twitter: @micah6community
micah6community@gmail.com

 

Micah 6 Community: The Name

In the Old Testament as people were waiting for the coming Messiah they began getting confused about what was really important in this world.  Many claimed that meaning and the way to God were through the ritual sacrifices established in the Torah.  But through Micah, God gave us the thesis statement and standard by which we can all judge our walks with him.

6:8 “He has shown you people what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”

 

New Ministry

My last post talked about my shift from large ministry to more organic and one-on-one disciple-making.  This has always been my preference, but I didn’t know it or know that it was anything other than just plain friendship. But I believe friendship ministry is what you see with Jesus as he is walking around with his disciples, especially the twelve.  They are camping, talking, eating, chilling at Mark’s mom’s house.  They are friends.  Jesus even says later that he is going to lay down his life for his friends.

For the past few months I have been working with Elevate Detroit looking to create friendships and build up Christ-centered communities in Southeast Michigan.  Elevate empowers local congregations to host barbecues in their neighborhoods, which allows us to connect people with faith communities that are local to them.  This creates friendships not only between people and churches, but churches with other churches and neighbors with neighbors.  Some of these barbecues are weekly, some are monthly, all have the same purpose.

Recently I have been thinking about what else we can be doing to build up neighborhoods for Christ.  The barbecues are a great start, but are still one event a week or a month. Of course the hope is that the faith communities will be able to follow-up and be more present, and they are all doing that to varying degrees.  But, I have been pondering going deeper.

 

Outlaw Outreach (Pt. 2)

I recently took a tour of the work that Central Detroit Christian is doing in Detroit.

The heart of their work is not terribly far from my house, just on the other side of the Lodge. Walking distance. The main mind there is Lisa Johanon, an energetic visionary with a heart for people and this city.