Dear Caldwell,
Greetings from Koinonia Farm in southern Georgia. I’m blessed to be here this week with a 7-member team of disciples workingand learning about living in an intentional Christian community. This is an historic place, as many of you know, where a Christian named Clarence Jordan launched an experiment in living together as the apostles did as described in the Book of Acts – living equally, holding all things in common, making all decisions together and living off the farmland and, in his day, black and white together.
In the segregated 1940s of the deep South, this didn’t go over with the local folks. So today, as we walk these grounds, it’s deeply moving to remember that shots were fired where we walk into families’ homes from the two-lane road out front or how the Ku Klux Klan held rallies nearby and organized a 70-car caravan intended to intimidate those living here into moving away.
But Clarence Jordan and those who shared his vision never gave up (nor did they fight back) and, thankfully, that vision remains intact here. It is an entirely different generation that carries on but the spirit of the place hasn’t changed – radical hospitality, justice, fair pay for hard work, intentional community, all shaped by daily chapel at 7:50 a.m., devotions at lunch and dinner and prayer breaks at 10 and 3 p.m.
As your ambassadors here, we (Richard Campbell, Nancy Nance, Nancy Pugh, Jane Wallwork, Mike Watson, Jesca Yisca-El and myself ) spend our days sorting, packing and preparing pecans and baked goods for the mail-order business that provides about half the community’s income. At the end of the day, our muscles are sore in some unfamiliar places but our minds are clear and hearts at peace.
What’s happening here is part of two emerging trends in Christian circles – intentional Christian community and what is called “new monasticism,” in which people forsake material gain for devotion to the Christian life and the common good. Several folks at Caldwell are interested in a conversation about that and how it may fit Caldwell’s future, which I look forward to.
Everything here is based on the life and lessons of Jesus and that, also, is what carries us from Sunday to Sunday as a congregation, if we can find a way to hold focus on The Way amid the world’s distractions and complications. This Sunday is the second in the season of Advent, in which we wait and prepare for Christ’s birth. Evie will preach from Matthew 3 on how we can be the “beloved community” to each other, through thick and thin, just as they seek to do here at Koinonia (a Greek word for community).
I look forward to seeing you back in Charlotte.
In Christ,
John