Communal Suburban Living

The focus of most of my thinking about intentional community within the Anglican tradition has two foci: the academy and the suburbs.  I focus on the academy because until just this summer, my professional home has been in the academy for my entire adult life.  And while I have enjoyed urban living briefly in stints in my 20's and early 30's, I was raised in the suburbs, have lived in the suburbs most of my life and am living here now.  So I guess that makes me a suburbanite.

Part of my vision for my new ministry venture, Emmaus Road Anglican Fellowship, is to turn the suburban culture on its head.  There are things we do every day in the suburbs that we could do better if we did them communally.  So I thought I would stop and run off a quick blog post before I undertake a great suburban ritual that fits that bill perfectly--namely, mowing my lawn.  A suburban church could turn the suburban culture on its head if it fostered such community that its members shared expensive and rarely used lawn tools like lawnmowers, rakes, shovels, etc.

Let's face it: There is no good reason that lawnmowers, used about once a week from late spring to late fall, sit idle most days in our suburban garages and sheds.  We should be able to share, especially us Christians who--allegedly--believe that even that mower is on loan to us from our Father who owns the cattle on a 1,000 hills.  The same thing goes for all sorts of other lawn and garden tools.  

What's more, an servant-minded church should mow the lawns of the elderly or shut-ins...if we only knew them well enough to know of their needs.  But do we?  

Three incidents drove this home to me:

First, we have had a couple of terrible storms since we moved into our suburban home.  Twice the power has been knocked out for 50 hours.  It was a difficult time but made so much more bearable by the spontaneous outbreak of suburban community we experienced.  For the first storm I did not have a power generator but one of my neighbors did.  He gave us power to keep our food fresh in the fridge and our sump pump pumping.  I acquired my own generator by the next storm and paid that good dead forward to other neighbors.  

Lesson:  Sharing large tools and equipment only makes sense.  It is part of how we can serve each other and the common good.

Second, a neighbor once asked me where I got my lawn mower. He was in the market to buy a new one.  I told him where, but then I offered to let him borrow mine each week.  If he would agree to refill after each use, that would more than compensate me.  He looked at me like I was crazy.  And bought his own.

Lesson: Sharing things is counter-cultural.  The church needs to model it.  If we did, maybe it would not be so odd when we offer to serve our neighborhood by sharing.

Final incident: An friend of mine, a retired cop who is not a church-goer, recently told me how he has, for years, mowed an elderly neighbor's lawn.  For free.  No money exchanged, he just did it because the neighbor needed it.  Here is a non-Christian who seems to understand more about the Jesus way of living than many American Christians!  He told me how someone in the neighborhood once noticed him doing it and was astonished he did it for free.  But my friend insisted it was just the right and good thing to do for one's neighbor.

Lesson: How often have we, as Christians, spontaneously and without any compensation, served our neighbors?  Imagine if that were a pervasive part of our church culture.  We would act not just because it is the right and good thing to do for a neighbor in need.  We would also be visibly acting in Jesus's name.  Such selfless living might give us and our Lord a lot more credibility in the eyes of our neighbors if they knew 'those church-goers' as the good servants of the neighborhood. 

Let's ask ourselves, then, how we can create a culture of sharing in our suburbs.  It is one of the things I hope we practice well at Emmaus Road Anglican.  And maybe, just maybe they will know we are Christians by how we share.