BY Andrew Howard
Since 2003 I’ve been captivated by community. The first time I had ever seen people living in community was when I was 22. It was a Christian ministry with a community house where guys coming out of recovery could live alongside guys who wanted to help them with whatever life had for them. It blew my mind that living with others could be something that happened past college roommates. An alternative to the nuclear family. It could be a way of living.
In 2007 my wife and I bought a 4-bedroom house and started extending offers to people that we knew and loved to live with us. We found ourselves living with another young married couple and many single friends. It was a good time of raising babies together, weekly rhythms like Celtic Daily Prayer and “worship and waffles”, learning carpentry skills to add another bedroom in the basement, and processing dumper diving runs. I knew what to do with 200 bottles of Naked Juice (freeze most and have 10 in the fridge for drinking), but what do you do with 10lb of fresh kale? My wife figured it out well.
Things were going pretty well, and when there was an opportunity to buy a 10-bedroom house down the street next door to some friends who also had a community house, we went for it. After getting the run-around from the bank, we were finally able to purchase this mansion in a rougher part of town. In this larger house, we were able to have a larger expression of community. More housemates, bigger house shows, pretty stellar Christmas parties… it was great. As I look back, I have so many fond memories.
However, there were challenging times too. We had an open room in our house, and we knew some traveling kids who did not have a home to call their own. Two of our housemates wanted to offer the room to these travelers for free while we continued to look for housemates. They said that it felt like we had 2 tunics and we should share with our neighbor who had none.
After talking about how this could be a challenging situation, we did say yes to having them stay, however we didn’t know enough to give our traveling friends good boundaries while staying with us. After getting dramatically drunk several times, we had to ask them to leave. A good learning lesson for us, but learnings often come with pain and stress.
Through the years, there’s been ebbs and flows of blessings and challenges. An amazing Seder meal with the whole community where everyone could feel God’s presence, a housemate that got offended by construction debris on their stuff in storage, a spiritually uplifting time of prayer and fasting, housemates being offended by insufficient communication about changes, a work project weekend where everyone comes together to paint our house, a housemate being offended by not being included on the decision to paint the house. Ebbs and flows of good and challenges.
And while the good has always been worth the challenges in my mind, my wife had a different perspective. The challenges were too great for her, and she no longer wanted to live in community. So here I am, a community leader serving for a cause that eventually has become hurtful to my spouse. What can I do?
Well, after trying to “make things work” for a few years, it finally came to a breaking point, and we agreed that the right path was to move out of the community. I was very sad. When we brought this news to the board members of the community, they instead offered that our family take a year off. To continue to live in our home, but to pass off the leadership of the community to others and to take a break from meetings. This sounded like an okay path, so that’s what we did.
We took a break for a season and focused more on our family and personal rest, which was a good choice. And during this time of rest, my wife and I were able to come to a consensus that we liked Christian community, but a less organized form of community. Holding onto some life-giving aspects of community, we’ve formed a new sort of community house that leans more into relational aspects of sharing meals together and hospitality, but eases back on the house meetings to once per month. I’ve been thinking of it as an informal Christian community, as opposed to an intentional Christian community.
My hope is that through all of life’s ebbs and flows, that the Spirit of Christ can be thick amongst us His children. Whether living in houses together or in separate homes. Jesus, come dwell amongst your children. Help us serve well and listen to each other, so that we can live together well. Amen.
Andrew Howard lives in Ecclesia, a community house in Minneapolis