I’m only a bit of the way through the latest Geez magazine and I just read an article that I’ve been meaning to mention now for a while.  Nate Buchanan in Changing the Story of Change: God Chooses New Protagonists helps reevaluate a gospel that centers on those of privilege to help those in need.  He thinks it’s a faulty model keeping the same people of power and spotlight and keeping the story about them.  He picks apart the New Monasticism movement a bit and suggests that they don’t go far enough.

The essence of the New Monasticism movement is articulated by and for people like me, not for single welfare moms.  The model envisioned by members of the movement is of God sending a prophet to t he suburbs to mobilize a great social movement, whereas in the Gospels, Jesus seems to head to the the equivalent of battered women’s shelters, gay pride rallies and drug corners to mobilize his movement.  That’s where is begins

I think Nate is onto something here.  While commendable,  I find that plenty of thinking of the poor and the marginalized are still usually very selfish.  It is all about how WE can help them, or how we can clear our conscious, or how we can make time for someone less fortunate.  There is still a slight sense of exploitation going on.  I see it all the time with our ideas about how we can help the poor compared to when we actually do help them.  It’s fun to talk about and even plan up great ideas, but actually getting down to the task means thinking ahead to plan a meal, not making plans with friends one night or putting yourself or family in danger.  In the end it just usually isn’t worth it, so we slowly back out of it and do something a little more comfortable, like throw money in an offering bucket.

The social workers in Sarnia have been really pushing a new system for working alongside of those in poverty.  It’s called Circles.  It’s one of the first ideas that I have seen that doesn’t create the regular hierarchical models of the needy and the person meeting the need.  This program puts 14 families in generational poverty together along with twenty-eight middle class families and links them together in teams.  Each team is led by the family coming from generational poverty and the middle class are there to support, learn and be challenged.  You don’t even know who is who when you walk into the room.  You are just a person there to learn and help make communities better.  I find it to be one of the best run programs that I know about and it seems to be working great here in Sarnia (more to come on this program later).

I think it is crucial that when speaking of those who we think are poor, we also remember that we are poor.  To live life out of any other reality will lead to pride and self-centeredness.  The poor aren’t there for the wealthy to appease their conscious by helping them.  The poor aren’t there because they need help becoming not poor.  Those that are poor are just living outwardly something that we all are inwardly.  Those that are poor have more to teach us about true life than we may no.

This is why I don’t think helping the poor once a week is really a viable option.  The only option is to become poor alongside of them and live our lives with them, not to make them more like us.  The only way the poor/rich barriers will be broken down is if people refuse to see a fence and live their lives in both worlds seamlessly because there is nothing different between them.  For as long as we are “helping them” from a distance we will never live life with them.  By doing that we are refusing to acknowledge their humanness.  The only way to truely live out our calling to bring the gospel to the poor is to live among them and become like them.  Anything else is to treat them like a disease that is trying to be cured.

Stuff has been on my mind lately. I’m amazed at how much happiness it can bring to someone. Watching my wife’s face as her bedroom gets decorated, watching my own face when I get a new camera, listening to girls talk about Ikea and guys talk about new cars, watching people at Wal Mart, watching commercials: all of it adds to my perspective on what stuff is and why it has such a hold on myself and our culture.

It has got to be unhealthy. Especially because I can upgrade my Ipod three or four times in a year and not even flinch and the other side of the world can’t even upgrade their rice dinner. If we were really honest with ourselves, do we really need everything we have? Do I really need the Culligan Water cooler, the new spice rack and every bag of M&M’s I pass (all things I can see while I’m sitting here). Do I really need to just go out and go shopping, for no other reason but to shop?

I think some of us have caught on that we have this sickness, so instead of buying less we start justifying our outings. Oh I just need this because of this and I need this because I have been thinking about doing this. Before it might have been ok to shop for no reason, but now you at least have to have some kind of reason. We are great at justifying our own actions.

I have way to much crap. I don’t need most of it, and I don’t want new stuff to upgrade my old stuff. For some reason, not wanting things just hasn’t been a good enough response to all my stuff. I buy way less than I used to, but it just wasn’t and isn’t enough. So I’ve had to take up a new practice. It’s called sharing. One of the first things I like to do when I get something new, is lend it to someone. It teaches me real fast that it’s not mine and I didn’t just buy it for me. I think sharing helps remind us of these things. So slowly I’m trying to learn to share more things and more often and hopefully use it as a discipline to break the hold that stuff has on me.

For me to own something privately and not share it I think is selfish and unchristian. We’ve convinced ourselves that if we buy something with money we earned that we don’t owe anyone and that we have entitlement to our possessions, at least before anyone else. Do we really though? Just because it exists behind closed doors that we own does that really mean that its ours to call the shots with? Or maybe if we just hide it there, maybe if I don’t tell anyone or remind anyone about my Ipod then no one will ask me for it. It is these kind of thoughts that fueled ATTIC and my dream of having everyone’s books and movies available for anyone at theStory‘s space. Hopefully though this is just the beginning.

Following Jesus I think means putting giving before receiving or preserving. We should be advertising that we as a community share to all and anything is up for grabs. If someone is in need then we should be the first ones to give of what we have (not just throw money at them every time). Whatever it is that we hold on too, may we be reminded over and over again that its not ours and we are just stewards. May we learn to share first whether it be our money, food or my Ipod.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet (The Story of Stuff) watch it right now, it’s brilliant.

Every year my life gets more complicated. I’m trying to think back to the days where I wasn’t kept on track by a calendar, because I didn’t make appointments and my only commitment was to go to recess early for a basketball game. Now as the years pile, so does the responsibility. I’m married now, helped plant a church, run a business, looking to buy a house and am trying to follow Jesus intentionally in the midst of it. All those things take up a tremendous amount of time; time well spent. Yet I can feel the pressures already to focus and be consumed by things that are bi-products of those things, especially now that we are looking to buy a house.

The pressure to live in a constant state of consumption is behind every door. I am always going to need new paint colours (at least every seven years right?), new furniture (to match my new paint colour), new tv (crt looks horrible compared to watching plasma), best surround sound system, new deck, new floors, new rooms, new cars, new pictures, new knick knacks and new clothes. In fact you are seemingly out of taste and our culture if you refuse to match, or refuse to buy something new, or God forbid you by your mattress second hand.

I’m fascinated by the pressures of design, fashion and the latest. This video explains it beautifully (we are showing it at theStory in March). I want to try and live simply. Buy used things to stop the production of old things. Buy less things, because I don’t really need them. Buy only things that I need for survival, instead of comfort, luxury and pure greed. I really need to learn this discipline, because I find myself getting drawn into the opposite daily. Why do I have to eat out as much as I do? Why can’t I just stay home and eat healthy and save money?

Our job as Christians should be to teach and help each other model a way of life that doesn’t keep others in bondage, and one that models Jesus. A life that is dedicated to the causes of the kingdom, not the causes of materialism, capitalism and consumerism. Simplicity, selflessness, peace and giving our trademarks of this kingdom we are to model. It becomes hard to do that when I’m chewing on a $7 big mac meal, in my expensive shoes and sweater, reading news about the poverty in Africa and shopping for my new big house. God continue to teach us to live on less and give more.

All this talk about renting or mortgaging got me thinking about other ways to ‘live.’ So I thought I would start another category at the side of this blog and keep at this for a bit longer trying to understand and work through the different ways people live under roofs. Another way that some people live is in community houses or communes. This is a peculiar type of living because it’s very rare in our culture and in many ways it goes against everything culture demands for success and independence. There is a lot about this way of living that attracts me and a number of reasons that scares me. Here is a post I wrote over a year ago about my dream of living in community and I still feel very passionate about it.

Positive Reasons For Living in Communes

- The idea of sharing resources with more than just your family helps us remember that it’s not ours to begin with. Some of us even have a hard time sharing with those in our family. It’s important for us to be constantly giving of ourselves and our stuff, and the more people that it can go to the better. Why buy two cars for two different families when you could have one between both of them? Why have two kitchens when you only need one? Why have two homes when you only need one? Learning to live off less so we can give away more should be a key discipline for Christians and this is a great way to head in that direction.

- My favourite living arrangements was at my apartment 109 in Toronto with Darryl, Nathan, Jon and Trevor. I’ve never had so much fun over and over again. Living with people is fun. This might be only for extroverts like myself, but I thrive off of having people around me all the time. Living with others is fun.

- When you share major things like homes and cars, you end up not spending nearly as much money as you would if you were providing all these things by yourself for your family. You would in a lot of ways be able to cut your expenditures in half. This means there is more left over to give away and do good with at the end of the month.

- When you live with your community as opposed to living across the city from them you are forced to be in community all day long and not just when you feel like it or are in a good mood. People see you in your worst and in your best. In a lot of ways you actually learn how to live with and around people unlike you would ever do unless you lived together.

- You actually have a community all around you all day that you can invite people into. Imagine a community of people living together who tried together to live like Jesus and love everyone around them. Imagine the community house being a place where anyone is welcome and they would be accepted by all.

Negative Reasons or Questions for Living in Communes

- People are strangely attached to their hard earned money. When you live in community too many things can go wrong. There are a lot of risks. People could bail half way through. Some could pay their bills late and wreck things for other people. You name it and it could go wrong when you put people and money together.

- People are attached equally to their things. It would be difficult for some to share their things with other people. We like things the way we like them and leave them. If whatever was mine was also the people that I lived with I probably would have some issues (or at least they would grow in time.) What if someone breaks something, who is responsible for get it repaired?

- Living in community means a lot less private time and time to yourself (reading, praying or in front of the TV or computer). Some people love their time alone and their homes are a sanctuary; a place to retreat from everything that happens around them all day. Living in community would change that a lot. The home would be a different sort of place; no longer a place of to get away but a place to be with.

- Everyone would have a different personality that they would be adding to the mix. I can annoy the heck out of some people and others would love me around every minute. How do you run a community house then? Do you just jump into it blindly and learn to love anyone put in your path or do you head hunt and only move in with people that you fit perfectly with. So they would fit emotionally, missionally and physically with you and the space. What if there are fights that take a while to get resolved?

- Kids bring an entire new dynamic to the picture. What are the limits of disciplining kids that aren’t your own? Or is there any sense of authority at all besides their parents? What really does it mean to properly and godly raise children together in a community without losing the role of the parents? When do kids start participating in financial matters? What if they are twenty-five and still living with the community and not doing anything? Or should they be a little responsible even as soon as them getting their first job? What about privacy with nursing mothers or toddlers or children’s nap times? What about safety? Can you really invite people off the street to sleep in the spare bedroom if there is a four year old next to them?

I’m sure there is lots more positives and negatives. Any to add?

To Rent or Mortgage Part 1
To Rent or Mortgage Part 2
To Rent or Mortgage Part 3
To Rent or Mortgage (A Third Way) Part 4

This post won’t necessarily about choosing between renting or mortgaging, but instead a third way that I have tried to drum up over the last little while which incorporates both. For the longest time I have been trying to understand what community means and the effects and sacrifices that should happen as a result of true community. I’m starting to realize that community takes on all forms, shapes and sizes and looks so different depending on the individuals that are part of it. Some communities are more shallow or deeper than others and some have different vices than others. So my idea I think would only work with a community of people that were sold out to each other on a number of levels, including financially, spiritually and emotionally. This is hard to come by, and usually the only time you see this happen is in communes (at least that I know of) but I’m hoping that it can exist without living in communes.

So imagine if I decided to rent for $550 a month, total expenses with insurance, cars, food and everything else was $1200 a month to live. Let’s say I’m making $2200 a month net pay. Now most people would say that I have enough money coming in that I could purchase a house and make the payments without a lot to worry about. However, what if instead of buying a house for myself I started paying off someone else’s in my community’s mortgage payments (personX). So $1000 a month more is going on personX mortgage which means that the mortgage would be paid of faster than double what it normally would be paid off. So if someone has 12 years left on their mortgage it can now be paid off in about 5 years. So now you have personX who has this extra money left over after five years and then they would be committed to helping someone pay off their mortgage for a minimum of that seven years (whatever was left on their mortgage.) So then we move to personY and now you have personX’s payments, my payments and personY’s payments all on the same mortgage which would pay it off even faster. And the cycle would continue until everyone in the community is debt free. Then the community’s money could go towards helping people outside their community survive, live or be debt free.

An idea like this has quite a bit of problems, and most of them are in the fact that we are dealing with humans. What happens when you get someone who is part of the community that wants help paying off his half a million dollar mortgage because he thinks he ‘needs’ a house that big? What happens when someone makes a bad decision with their money? How do you decide whose debt gets paid off next and how do you not hurt the people’s feelings when they aren’t chosen to be next? These of course are all normal problems that would suffice when you are dealing with money, but I think you could work around them if you have a group of people who cares about each other enough. Doing something like this reminds us that we are to share and take care of one another instead of just worrying about ourselves and our own equity.

There are only a few ways something like this could start. The first way is that someone has to take the first hit. Meaning if I want this to start maybe I should just stay renting at this great low price and then send all the access to personX’s mortgage so you can get someone else on board who can help you take it further. The second way I thought about doing it is if you could get ten people to give $100 a month and all of that goes to one person’s mortgage and then when that’s person’s is paid off they would start taking their extra money and putting it on whoever is next. The key to remember in something like this is it’s based on the idea that we don’t own anything, we are only stewards. My community is just as important as I am, and is just as much my responsibility as they are to themselves. Unfortunately we’ve been so pulled apart from each other and told the lie of independence that it freaks us out whenever we think about using our resources for someone else’s good. But this of course is our call isn’t it. To use what God has given us to bless those around us. So what do you think, do you think something like this could work? Would you ever be interested in doing it with your community?

To Rent or Mortgage Part 1
To Rent or Mortgage Part 2
To Rent or Mortgage Part 3
To Rent or Mortgage (A Third Way) Part 4

I’ve had a few comments on my latest posts on renting or mortgaging. Here is the overall picture I’m getting and probably where I stand with all this.

1. I’m starting to think that having debt is one thing and having a mortgage on a house is another. My Uncle Doug left this comment, “If you own a house and have enough equity in it to sell and pay off your mortgage, then is it really debt.” That is the question I was asking and I think it is a lot different than getting a loan for school, cars, renovations or anything else. There is however the small risk of the housing market crashing, like we’ve seen in the USA lately, where you could owe more than your house is worth. So getting a mortgage doesn’t feel like I’m jumping into something I can’t afford because its not like I wouldn’t have the equity of the house to even out how much I owe on it.

2. There are a few benefits I see to renting. One is that you are paying less a month. I’d be paying about 1/3 more a month if I was to own. However, that 1/3 I’m sure events itself out after I own the house and I’m not making any sort of mortgage payments a month as opposed to renting where I’d be doing it for the rest of my life. The second benefit I see is the limited attachment I have to a specific place or area. When I rent I don’t have to worry about selling my house and I’m not tied down to any place. However, the negative side of that is that I’m not constrained to one place which means I don’t have that place that I call home where I’m investing in a specific community for a long period of time which is something that I want to do. The third benefit I see to renting is the ease of living. I don’t have to do repairs, fix my roof or leaks, I don’t have to cut the grass (but I do because I get $50 a month taken off rent), or pay land tax. A lot of the expensive and time consuming responsibilities of owning are gone which frees me up to do other things that I love.
3. We’ve been looking at buildings for theStory lately. I’m starting to realize that we could save almost $1000 a month on some buildings if we bought it instead of renting (not even including how much goes into equity instead of the landlords pocket). So that is softening me up to the idea of owning.

4. A large part of my discomfort with mortgaging is the obsession I see in the generation older than me (generalization) with paying off their mortgages and saving up for retirement and well basically an obsession with money and things that money can buy. So my initial reaction is to retaliate because I don’t want to be like that so I think I need to do everything opposite. This of course is a bad reaction sometimes and isn’t a good response to negative behavior. Instead I should see the negatives of a decision and the positives and then work to eliminate the bad and work towards the good and not necessarily throw the baby out with the bathwater.
5. In the end I think I will probably end up getting a mortgage for these reasons. For starters, financially it makes a lot of sense. I’ll be paying fairly the same amount every month (give or take a few hundred) but in one or two decades I’ll have some money to show for it that can be used for all sorts of great things which I’ll probably and hopefully want to do with it. Second, I love the idea of planting my roots in a community and investing my time, money and resources into it. I want to know my neighbours and I want to be there for the long haul. Third, I want to have the freedom to do what I want with it. I want to be able to have extra rooms to give to those in need or friends that are visiting. I want to be able to tear down a wall if it means bigger living room to hang out in. I want to be able to make it other people’s homes also and not just my own. I want it to be used for God’s ideas in the community that I’m in.

So with that said, I’ll probably get a mortgage. I still have one more idea though. I’ll post it next. I don’t know if it will work, or if anyone else would ever be on board, but it’s an idea I’ve been running through my head for a long time now, something I haven’t heard of before within a community. I’ll get to that soon.