This is a hard decision for me because I don’t like to miss out on things.  I hate the fact that conferences are going to run without me helping organize them (like the one coming up in a few weeks in toronto).  I want to be involved in every good idea there us.  I want to be acknowledged as someone who has a lot to offer and to do that well you need to travel and get your name out there.  It’s hard because I can so easily jump in a car and be in Toronto or London for the next big concert or conference and be part of all the great and big things happening in Toronto.  I didn’t really realize how spread out I was until I started quitting all these things I was involved with.  I just tried to stop caring about things outside of what I could participate in and give it my all.  So I started coordinating the downtown Arts and Environment festival, biking more, sitting on the Internet less, got some chickens in my backyard, going to the farmers market,  giving my time and focus to the local older Anglican congregation, focused more on gardening and making myself available to people downtown.

All of these things, if you asked me five years ago, were not on that radar.  I wouldn’t have understood the purpose of them.  They aren’t big or important enough.  That to me is the issue.  As I become more local and intentional about where I find myself, the words big and important no longer carry with them the weight that they used to have.  In fact, now “big” and “important” has become adjectives with a negative connotation.  I see no need for big anymore, I think its detrimental to true progress and change.  The bigger something gets the less meaningful it becomes to me.  If it gets even bigger, then it becomes something I purposefully go against.  I blame this on my focus on being local.  Being local has given me an appreciation for the unimportant and small so much so that I don’t see any other way forward.

Quotes that I’ve heard a million times like Mother Theresa saying “We can do no great things, only small things with great love” take on all new meaning to me.  Any desires to change the world with one idea, or become famous, or to oppose the powers that be, or to vote in the right government are all failed attempts to try and control what I don’t like and find some type of validation in who I am.  There is no room for these kinds of big ideas and big heads in a local environment.  The only thing that is required of you is that you love the people you see everyday.  It’s simpler.  We don’t like that because it makes us feel like we aren’t doing anything, but that’s all that’s required.

My life now is less important.  It’s less revolutionary.  It’s less effective.  It’s less meaningful.  But I feel like an move towards this kind of living pushes back against a world that tells you you need to live a certain way to be important, revolutionary, effective and meaningful.  According to the world these kinds of people are useless.  Good thing the world doesn’t get to define those words for us.  Every time I say no to something outside of my city.  Every time I buy from a local restaurant instead of a franchise.  Every time I choose to have someone over for dinner rather than skype a friend in another city.  Every time I run a local event rather than a national one.  I don’t know what it is, but I feel like it’s working.  I feel like what I’m doing is more important than anything else I’ve done before.  I feel like planting my garden in my front yard to meet my neighbours is more important than running a conference full of big name speakers.

My goal is to keep going in this direction.  Less big, more small.  This means cutting out more and more of my social Internet use and instead bringing more people in my house.  Means cutting out more grocery shopping where the food comes from all over and instead getting it from my garden and the market.  This means not finding truth just in big names speakers and authors but finding it in the people I run into downtown.  This means the Internet will see less of me, or at least it will mean that I will see less of it.  I hope I can keep doing it, but it’s a lot to give up, a lot of things that I have grown accustomed to.  It feels good though.  It feels right.  So I’ll go with it.

Related posts:

1. Hard Discipline or Easy Money
2. Local Internet

Just some questions I’ve been pondering.

Related posts:

1. Community and Mission: Catch 22
2. Questions on Community
3. Living in Community: Maybe A Few More Years

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.

Related posts:

1. My Story as a Circles Ally
2. How Do We Change This Horrible System
3. Engagement Story

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.

Related posts:

1. When Sharing Gets Real
2. The Sarnia Mindset – Part 1 (Lots of Stuff)
3. Web Stuff

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.

Related posts:

1. The Kingdom: Living Like the Poor
2. Living in Community: Maybe A Few More Years
3. Living with the Goodyears

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?

Related posts:

1. Living in Community: Maybe A Few More Years
2. Questions on Community
3. The Kingdom: Living Like the Poor

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?

Related posts:

1. To Rent or Mortgage Part 3
2. To Rent or Mortgage Part 2
3. To Rent or Mortgage

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.

Related posts:

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

There were a few comments left on my last post which got me thinking about a few other things This isn’t so much of a financial battle for me as it is a spiritual one. It’s hard for me to decide to ‘plan for the future’ when sometimes I think I don’t have a lot of room for that in my worldview. I don’t know how I feel about RRSP’s, savings bonds, investing in myself for later, personal equity and other things in that nature. I don’t want to demonize any of them, that isn’t my point, I do however want to tread lightly because I’ve seen firsthand what these types of decisions can do to someone, and while they are probably unaware of their present state it isn’t exactly that direction that I want to head towards.

Why would I invest in myself when there is people in need all around me? People say to invest now so I can give more later, but that doesn’t seem or feel right at all. Jesus didn’t seem to withhold giving someone to something because he wanted to keep it for himself so he could have lots and then decide to give it away at a later time. Then the question arises with what happens when I have kids? Shouldn’t I plan and save for their future so I don’t leave them out to dry? Or do I teach and train them how to survive and make wise decisions and teach them strong morals in how to look at money instead, or both/and?

I’ve had a few people mention to me the parable of the talents as a valid reason to get a mortgage or to save up for the future. I don’t think that the parable of the talents has anything to do at all with how we use money today and investing it into a bank account. In fact I’d be more inclined to read the parable of the talents as a reason for not getting a mortgage. The parable is all about using what they’ve been given wisely and in the time granted instead of sitting on it because of fear or what may happen. Here is a cool article on the parable of the talents that will send your head spinning. I’m just not convinced that this is the best argument for preparing for the future.

Jaci posted an interesting comment about ‘taking’ houses from lower income families by moving into the poorer neighbourhoods. Not sure where I stand with that one. I can understand it if all the Christians were taking up the subsidized housing in a city, but that argument really could be said about anything then. Why shop at Dollerama if we are taking cheap necessities away from those that need it? I’d be interested to hear if there was any examples of cities or areas where Christians were moving into them and grabbing them up before people in hard financial positions were able to attain them.

When it comes down to it, my uneasiness isn’t with saving money, or preparing for the future. All of those can be good and healthy things in the right context I think. I think the biggest thing that doesn’t sit right with me is getting debt. Achieving something I haven’t paid for and working towards paying it off over the course of fifteen years. Is debt/mortgages a healthy thing? Are they just the epitome of our culture that gives us what we want when we want it without ever learning to save. Or can they be good things? It’s not like the Bible says nothing about debt. Debt seemed to be a regular part of their lives (even though they have a seven year solutions to it). Is it OK for debt to be part of my life? Is it ok to get something before I can afford it? Any more thoughts?

Related posts:

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

I have struggled passionately with this over the last year or so. Getting married, making more money, paying utilities all play into the raging question if I should get a mortgage or if I should just stay renting. It is a long struggle, and for some reason most people that I have talked to seem to have their mind made up on what the best decision is.

Up front mortgaging looks like the best move. You get a nice house right away. You are investing money into yourself instead of a landlord or throwing it into the garbage as some people put it. Houses haven’t really gone down much in value; they usually retain their value more than any other asset you can buy. So purchasing a house isn’t like purchasing a car, because you can resell it usually for what you bought it for. Building equity into yourself has a lot of advantages for the future. You are able to just buy bigger and more things as you get older (that could be selfishly or selflessly depending on who you are).

However, I think there are strong arguments out there for me to just stay renting also. For starters renting is risk free. If the market crashes or if something goes wrong, I haven’t lost anything because my money isn’t in my home. Renting also frees you up to leave quicker and easier, yes you could sell your house if you were mortgaging but nothing beats the ease of just leaving your rental and leaving the problems to the landlords. I don’t have any responsibility for repairs, land tax or resale. These are all things that bring stress into lives and people and bog people down. Rent is significantly cheaper also a month, because I’m not paying land tax, repairs and it’s just a cheaper payment a month, I have a lot more money free per month than I would if I owned a home.

Spiritually speaking, getting a mortgage scares me. Part of me feels like I’m joining the ranks of good intentioned humans out there that are able to get something they can’t afford because we live in the west. I can live in the luxury of something I haven’t yet earned and can live with that debt for 10 years or 25 years. I’ve seen too many people live lives of stress and pain because of their debts and living beyond their means. So by getting a mortgage am I somehow saying that I’m invincible? The temptations to get a bigger house in two years won’t affect me. The temptation to constantly buy bigger things on my house’s equity won’t affect me. How do I know this isn’t just a slippery slope of consumerism and materialism? Something I would be a less prone too if I just rented and lived month to month. I’ve been told to just trust God and get a mortgage. I feel sometimes that it would be trusting God more not to get one and live day to day. Is investing for retirement even a right option? Why am I worrying at 23 for when I am 60? Aren’t we told not to worry about tomorrow let alone in 40 years? Am I being selfish just saving and saving and saving every penny I get for some special day in the future? What happens when kids work into the equation? What if they want to go to school? Is it wrong to want to pay for them to go?

I want to be smart with my money. I want to make an impact and do amazing things with it. I want to be able to use my money to get others out of debt and to help anyone in need whenever I see it. I could have an extra $500 a month sitting around if I rent to do that. Or I could put it all into a home now and in ten years have a heck of a lot more to be able to do that plus the deep pockets to make financial decisions that could bless people in the future. I don’t want to be like those that I have seen that live to pay off their debts, and then live to put money into RRSP’s and then live to spend it after. So honestly, what would you do? Rent or Mortgage? Why? What’s the cons of both to you? Pros?

Related posts:

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