Do you remember blowing on Nintendo
cartridges? Most folks who are around my age will remember the
original NES game system. I spent hours playing Nintendo, and I can
still hum pretty much the entire soundtrack from Mario Brothers. As
much fun as those games were, the thing I remember best is the
physical experience of Nintendo. I remember the feel of the controls
and the clap of the plastic hood. Above all, I remember the
cartridges.
They did not always work. The longer
you owned a Nintendo, the more likely it was you were going to have
issues with dust collecting on the sensitive electronics at the
opening of the cartridge. If the sensors were not clean, the game was
liable to have errors that made it unplayable. Blank, white screens
and garbled text were common. In order to get games working right, we
often resorted to blowing across the sensors. Most of the time, that
did the trick. We re-inserted the game and things worked as they were
supposed to.
Though we did not realize it at the
time, this process of cartridge cleaning taught an important lesson.
In Nintendo and in the rest of life, there are moments that call for
blowing on the cartridge and starting over. Sometimes, there is
nothing we can do but clean the sensor and restart the game.
After an extended period of prayer and
corporate discernment, we feel that our present model is no longer an
adequate container for the work that God is calling us to do in our
city. We sense that our most faithful move at this point is to take a
step back and re-evaluate of our entire way of operating as a
community. It is time to take the cartridge out and blow on it.
We have been meeting in roughly the
same format for almost three years now: We have gathered for Bible
reading, singing, worship and a potluck meal. These meetings have
generally been very deep, spiritually, and have provided a lot of
nurture to those who have come. Yet, the core group of CHF has not
substantially changed in the last two years. Probably for a variety
of reasons, we have not grown in the way that we need to in order to
be a sustainable community.
It feels clear that our present model
is not working. The lack of growth over the last few years is
equivalent to the White Screen of Death on the old Nintendo. It is
time to pull out the cartridge and restart the system. The big
question is, what does it look like for Capitol Hill Friends to
restart?
Here is what we know right now: The
last regular meeting of Capitol Hill Friends for 2012 will be this
Sunday, November 4th. For the rest of November and December, the
members of Capitol Hill Friends will be doing some intensive
visioning and strategizing for the next phase of our life together as
a community. We will be doing a lot of praying, and we will continue
to listen together to how the Holy Spirit wants to guide and shape us
as a community of disciples.
We have a great awareness right now of
our deep need for Christ's life and power in our midst, and we are
asking God to clarify our calling, vision and structure as a
fellowship. Who are we called to serve? What are we called to teach,
and how are we called to teach it? What structures are we called to
adopt in order to facilitate the spiritual, emotional and physical
thriving of our community, and of the city where we live as a whole?
With great awareness of our own weakness and failings, we are seeking
God's way forward for us.
Moving
forward, I hope to find out what it means for us to be a community of
Christian practitioners.
What does it mean to practice our faith in ways that tangibly bless
the communities where we live? All the teaching in the world is of
little use if we are not learning how to live as Christ's body in the
world.
As we
continue to engage in this process of discernment, we do have some
clarity about how God is calling us to reorganize our meeting format
in the coming year. Beginning in January, Capitol Hill Friends plans
to adopt a new model that we hope will encourage the development of
more bonded community and deeper spiritual practice. Our new format
will feature two main components: A weekly small group, and a monthly
gathering.
The
small group will be a place where each of us can be nurtured in our
walk with Jesus, and get equipped for the work that Christ is calling
each of us to. This group will be a fellowship for nurturing the
spiritual gifts of each person, and developing our capacity to share
the good news of Jesus with others in our communities. We will seek
to make this an intimate space, where each individual can feel safe
bringing their full selves and find support for the journey that
Jesus is calling each of us into.
Our
monthly gatherings will be creative and energetic programs that
engage people from a wide variety of backgrounds and invites them to
experience the power of Christ's living presence in our midst. Each
month's program will be different, and we hope to invite outside
presenters to lead our time together. We hope that these monthly
gatherings will be a time of edification for our broader community -
including Quakers from other Meetings in the area; Christians from
other churches; seekers without a faith community; and secular people
who are curious about encountering a spiritual faith that is directly
dependent on God's power.
We
still have a lot of discernment to do, but these are the basic
contours of what our restart looks like: Creating a space for our
broader community to creatively explore spiritual teaching and
worship, while at the same time nurturing the ongoing development of
a smaller core that wants to be part of a mutually supportive
community, rooted in Jesus Christ.
Holy Spirit, come blow on us. Clear
away all the dust that holds us back from growing in you.
2 comments:
What about enabling Skype attendance for others from outside Washington DC?
We hadn't really considered Skype as an option for us, as our way of meeting is very participatory. I think it would probably be sort of a strange disconnect to have folks taking part remotely through a computer.
Thanks for the idea, though! Maybe we can think about live-streaming our monthly gatherings at some point?
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