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Entering this voluntary covenant not so much to impose an order, but to nurture and preserve unity, it is our desire to be governed foremost by sacrificial love as exemplified by Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior (Matthew 22:47-30).

We believe that God the father created all. While, in his triune being, God the father, the son, and the spirit exemplified wholeness and completeness in the comm(on)unity of selfless, unconditional (agape) love, he nonetheless chose to make mankind in his image as an object of love to live in a voluntary relationship with himself (Genesis 1).By rejecting this love we have become lack and incompleteness. History is therefore a story of the struggle of man to cope with a broken world and a yearning to know the one in whose image we were made. While mankind is fighting to achieve peace and wholeness in a world of dissatisfaction and chaos, God is continuously pouring himself out as a gift in order that we may return once again to him. In Jesus Christ, God himself took on the affliction of flesh in order that he might redeem our insufficiency, and live for us the fulfillment of man’s identity in God; to prepare the way of the everlasting Kingdom of Heaven, where everything broken realizes completion and wholeness (Genesis 4:7, Romans 8:18-23, Revelation 21:1-4). When Christ returned to heaven, victorious over both sin and death, to sit at the thrown of the father as an advocate for us, he sent the Holy Spirit to continue the great work of reconciling creation to himself, and daily, by grace, to redeem us out of the fallenness of our world (John 16:12-15, Romans 8:26-27, Hebrews 4:14-16, 7:23-28). The Holy Spirit empowers disciples to become the Body of Christ on this earth. A body devoted to the teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles, to the daily fellowship of disciples, to the common meal and common worship, to the sharing in the baptism and Eucharist of Christ Jesus, and to the sharing of all earthly possessions. As the body of Christ, our citizenship is not of this earth, and we cling not to its kingdoms or desires, but seek first, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the realization of an eternal community of perfected fellowship (Acts 2:42-47).

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Because of our incompleteness, mankind is always consuming. Whatever the object may be our hunger is never satisfied (Ecclesiastes 1:8). It is very tempting to build an economic kingdom based on feeding the masses, but Christ tells us that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”(Matthew 4:4) No matter how much we fill our stomachs we can never be satisfied by anything but all of God. In this way we learn that the economy of the Kingdom of Heaven must reveal the nature of God if it is ever going to satisfy. The first problem of economics is meeting unlimited wants on limited resources. While our planet does have limited means of feeding man, God is unlimited. Having a desire indicates that satisfaction of that desire exists. If it does not exist on this earth, it exists in God.

God is revealed through our economy when we acknowledge that all of creation finds its source in him (Deuteronomy 8, Psalm 24:1, John 1:3-4). We do this by only taking enough for one day at a time (Exodus 16). When we acknowledge that it is God that sustains us and not our own hand, we are able by faith to only take as much as we need, and when we do this there is enough for everyone. Since there is enough for everyone in God’s very good creation, there should not be poor among us, but because of our fallenness, his word says there will always be poor. That is why Christ came proclaiming the year of the Lord; not only a year for the redistribution of wealth but for the liberation of slavery and the redemption of all things broken and marginalized (Deuteronomy 15, Isaiah 61). As the body of Christ we strive to perfect the “art of give and take” to subvert our consumptive culture by not considering that any of our possessions, or even our very lives, are our own, but by sharing everything in common with the body of believers, and with any who have need (Acts 4:32-35, 1Thessalonians 2:8).

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In a broken and chaotic world, men throughout history have tried to create order by means of government. The selfish impulses of one man are put in check by his dependence on and domination by another equally fallible man. Submission to a governing body often seeks to replace worship of God with service to a fallen human system. This conflicts with God’s desire to be the object of all of our worship (Matthew 4:10). You cannot serve both God, and worldly systems (Matthew 6:24, Galatians 1:10). Also, in order for one man to govern another he must subdue him. Throughout history men have used violence to subdue one another, or to resist submission. As followers of Christ we are called to a higher standard (Genesis 9:5, Matthew 5:38-48). We are to be committed to choosing Christ’s way of peace and mercy, and to allow God to fight our battles for us, resisting the temptation to usher in the Kingdom by our owns methods and means, even if it costs us our very lives (Deuteronomy 32:35, Luke 4:1-13, Matthew 26:52-56). We subvert the imperial consumerist culture by identifying with Christ’s self-sacrifice and others-centeredness in both baptism by submersion and the sharing of the Eucharist, knowing that our battles are not against our brother, but against darkness itself (Romans 6:5-14, 12:5, Ephesians 6:12). We are liberated in Christ not only from the corrupted flesh and blood systems of this world, but also from the sin in our very own hearts by the adoption of the attitude of Christ through a contemplative life of daily meditation and prayer and through accountability to the eternal and universal body of Christ. (Romans 6:15-23, Philippians 2:1-11, 1 Peter 4:1-2, Matthew 26:41)

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Like satan’s original sin, man is always seeking to be like God. We were given the law in order that we might see how we can never do this. We use religion as a ladder to climb to the top of the tower of Babel, but in this competition to please God our connection to one another is broken (Genesis 11:1-9, 4:1-16). It is only in mending this relationship through the grace of Christ that we can in turn mend our relationship with God (Matthew 22:37-40). Even Jesus was tempted to lift himself up, but instead showed that all glory comes from and belongs to the father (Matthew 4: 6-7, John 8:54, John 12:32). In humility we glorify the father and are blessed to take part in his Kingdom coming to earth. We realize that as sinful beings we are in no position to pass judgment on others for their sinfulness (John 8:1-11). Neither do we use our freedom as an excuse to continue sinning, or allow our faith to cause our brother to stumble (1 Corinthians 6:12, 8:9, 10:23-33).  We believe that our first relevancy is authenticity, and that our stories are a gift for multiplying the work of God in our life into the lives of others (John 15, Revelation 12:11) We commit to confrontation and reconciliation in the example of Matthew 18, believing that truth is worth fighting for. We will not talk behind another’s back, creating dissension and distrust, but will hold one another accountable in love. We should faithfully confess our sins to one another, always being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19, 5:16. We are blessed to share in both our brother’s joys and in his sorrows (Romans 12:9-21). By the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that we, in all our failure, find that it is God who makes himself famous and not us (Psalm 46:10, 2 Corinthians 12:9). We simply seek to be a part of the Missio Dei on the earth.

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Furthermore, as we embrace the mystery of our God, and commit to struggle together on our journey toward truth, we are purified and increasingly reflect the completion and love of the Holy Trinity in a community that reaches thoughout the earth (2 Cornithians 3:13, John12-13). It is then by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that we raise this covenant to our Father in Heaven an offering of thanksgiving for his bringing us thus far, and for his grace that continuously transforms our insufficiency into his abundance.

sometimes i wake up in the middle of the night shaking and scared and suddenly everything i’ve been pushing down pops back up like a beach ball in the pool and threatens to choke me. i feel so terrible alone, but i dont want any one to touch me and i dont know what i could say to them. im scared that ill go crazy. im scared that ill die. is it weird that id rather write this on here for total strangers than on myspace where all of my friends will get an update and go read it. what do i do the next day when i am calmer again and they are looking at me or worse saying something about it? what if i am crazy an everyone finds out? i know that more likely no one reads this page at all. but id hope that someone does. not because this is in any way going to be useful for them to read, but just so that my agony and frustration and the words it takes to get it out arent wasted and like samuel God will keep my words from “falling to the ground.”

if you, like me, are tired of talking about following Christ and letting him transform lives through you, and not actually doing anything, please join us in praying that God will bring the needy to our doorsteps and show us how to fill them with his love. it’s time to stop dreaming. prayer is rebelling against this present age, knowing that God wants something better than this for our world and that he alone can make it happen.