Introduction: David Janzen, author of Fire, Salt, and Peace: Intentional Christian Communities Alive in North America (published in 1996 by Shalom Mission Communities, a division of Reba Place Fellowship, Evanston, Illinois) visited Washtenaw Covenant Community in June of 1995. What follows is an excerpt from the article published in Fire, Salt, and Peace.
In twenty-four fully-packed hours, the life of Washtenaw Covenant Community was opened to me in frank talks with a few of the community's coordinators, with members of the celibate brotherhood, with a few fathers, and with a small group of women.
Two of our teachers at Cornerstone School proposed a plan to engage our young people and their families in outreach work in a poor section of Detroit. We bought a run-down house, community volunteer workers refurbished it, and some of our young adults are now living there and preparing a day camp for children in the neighborhood. "Detroit Summer Outreach" is a new venture for us into social outreach in the inner city and our young people are very excited about it.
As a charismatic community, we center on praise and worship of the Lord. As an ecumenical people, we want to daily seek the face of God, be guided by the Spirit, and intercede for Christian unity. We want the scriptures to form our thinking. We encourage members to pray daily and to read scripture regularly -- both individually and as families. As a stimulus to daily prayer, we publish a monthly prayer guide that offers a Gospel portion for each day, a Psalm, a reading from a Christian author, and some suggestions for intercession.
We come together weekly in small groups and have a common worship on Sunday afternoons. Since we are an ecumenical community, our members belong to various churches and are a source of leaven, light, and service there.
We celebrate what we call the "Lord's Day," beginning on Saturday evening with an opening ceremony similar to the Jewish Sabbath ceremony. In families, the wife lights the candle and bread and wine, along with a festive meal, are blessed as our families celebrate God's goodness, what he has done for us.
There is a community weekend retreat twice a year, during which we have an extended time of worship and hear teaching. We also have retreats for men, women, and small groups, and encourage members to take individual retreats when possible. A recent weekend retreat for young people in the Sword of the Spirit was attended by 150 young adults -- all aiming at being disciples of Christ.
Community members are encouraged to seek advice and help in their efforts to be Christ's disciples and to live disciplined lives. A community pastoral leader for each individual and each couple is called to provide brotherly or sisterly guidance and support in the day-by-day living out of community life. Such a relationship of personal care is established at the initiative of the individual member.
A series of basic community teachings provides formation on how to live community life well.
While our community worship is charismatic, lively, and spontaneous, a key turning point for us came when the Lord showed us He wants our worship to be marked by reverence for Him -- a respectful seriousness and submissiveness that focuses on God for who God is, including a time of silence and listening to the Lord. We want times of praise, gratitude, and repentance in worship, and enjoying His presence. As an ecumenical community, we deliberately draw on the various traditions represented in our body.
The culture we aim for is natural community and natural relationships -- a neighborliness that our American culture has largely lost. We celebrate together a lot -- birthdays, weddings, camping trips, vacations together -- so we can be like an extended family. And it is not just for the fun and friendship; the main reason we are together is to be disciples of Christ.
We enjoy a rich variety of gifts and talents, especially in music and drama. Our music group has created many songs and music tapes; we have excellent story-tellers and producers of plays like "El Shaddai," an Easter play based on the story of creation. Our youth perform such plays about twice a year, and our summer camps encourage our young people to use their gifts for others who are performing service.
Children and family life are important parts of community life. We try to help our families live a quality life together, with a strong focus on scheduling community events in a way that does not interfere with family life but makes community a natural part of it. We encourage families to have a weekly family night together and to celebrate the opening of the Lord's Day ceremony together on Saturday evenings. This makes it a "community event", too.
Initiation into community begins with the "Life in the Spirit" seminar, introducing newcomers to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. A weekend retreat with community members, where we present our vision for Christian community, is followed by a series of courses teaching the foundations of living the Christian life in a community context. It is typically a three-year process.
In the early months of this process, we invite new people to make an "Underway" commitment, stating their intention to follow the life described in our covenant and be formed by our teaching.
This involves their being part of a small group in which the teaching is discussed. The purpose is to allow people to experience community life before making a solemn covenant commitment. They should not do so unless they experience a personal call from the Lord to do so, because this kind of life is not for everyone.
Committed members are free to leave the community at any time. Because it is a commitment to the Lord and to other members, it affects the entire community. So we encourage people to make such a decision only after serious prayer and counsel. When someone leaves the community in this way, we ask them to share their decision with the community and we pray God's blessing on them. In instances of serious unrepented sin and a refusal to receive counsel, we may take the initiative in terminating membership.
A husband and wife together are taught to raise a Christian family and that the husband is head of the family, as scripture teaches, but that he works as a partner with his wife in this. The same approach applies to community: The overall leadership is male, but not in isolation. Women leaders take a special concern for the women and children in the community, but they also complement the men's leadership gifts with a dimension that men do not offer. We recognize the importance of harmonizing the gifting of men and women to arrive at a rich complementarity.
In mixed gatherings, women do not lead worship or preach, but they are strongly encouraged to speak -- personally and prophetically. Women teach among women, and in many of our courses, a husband and wife will both teach together, again following the principle of complementarity.
We have a women's leadership team and an advisory council composed of men and women who seek the Lord on community issues and provide input to the coordinators.
Our main governing leaders are called "coordinators," because we come from various traditions for whom the term "elder" has differing meanings. The coordinators are selected by asking members to prayerfully submit candidates. The coordinators review the recommendations, discerning their respective gifts, and ask the candidates if they have a personal calling to this service. The final decision is made by the coordinators and announced to the community. After two or three years, there is a reconfirmation by the community. Currently, a coordinator's term of service is indefinite; however, term limits and a pattern of rotation of service are being considered.
Coordinators invite many other members to serve in positions of leadership -- for small groups, special ministries, and various committees. At many community events, leadership is rotated so a wider group can test and exercise their gifts. An advisory council meets monthly to hear what the coordinators are planning and to give input. We have members' meetings in addition to our regular worship meetings and conduct an annual survey of all members to get their assessment of community life. Leaders from other Sword of the Spirit communities visit annually to hear any concerns of our members, to review how community life is going, and to evaluate how effectively the coordinators are serving.
The community's Senior Coordinator serves on The Sword of the Spirit Council, which meets annually. Each community in The Sword of the Spirit is autonomous while all share a common vision. Any important decisions by The Sword of the Spirit Council are referred to each of the member communities. Such a proposal must receive the approval of two-thirds of the members of two-thirds of the communities to become policy.
We take no formal political stands and endorse no political group; but we do encourage our members to be active. We want to promote good candidates with sound family values; some of our members have even run for office. We are involved in various social projects, including a medical clinic that serves the poor and a pregnancy counseling center.
We feel ourselves to be most at tension with today's society over issues of morality and of "right and wrong" -- that we should teach it and be accountable. We chose community because we need support in doing this. We see a disintegration in our culture not only of family life but also of natural community. We emphasize the Christian values of servanthood and a willingness to lay down one's life for others; to generously share ones possessions and to live for others and not just for yourself. We feel that many young people in our society have a lot of undisciplined leisure time, too many possessions, and too much entertainment, which we think is unhealthy and detrimental to other important things, such as mission, service, civic responsibilities, growth in mature committed relationships, etc.. We want to raise children with strong Christian character and to be responsible, mature adults. We want to be a people who, together, thirst for holiness, righteousness, and loving committed relationships. We want to know who we can count on.
Our biggest recent challenge has been determining how countercultural we want to be. The issues are not over ideals of discipleship but concern practical struggles. Dating is one example: Isn't courtship primarily for finding a Godly spouse? We believe that much of the modern approach to dating is ungodly and does not lead to strong marriages. This leads to a typical question of just how different we are going to be. How are we going to live it out in the face of the pressures society brings to bear? We experience tensions over what parents can realistically do in these circumstances.
Another questions is: How much common life do we want together. In the past, we have had people living together and sharing possessions, which requires a lot of effort. We no longer do this, but we believe it was right to try it. We do have a celibate brotherhood who have all of their possessions in common and it works very well. This enables them to do a lot. We now have members who want to live near one another and do a lot together; there are others who do not feel that call. We want to avoid having people feel pressured to do more than they feel called to do or are able to do.
In the past few years we have come under heavy attack simply for being a community -- "too authoritarian, too disciplined, cult-like, and too counter cultural." We have been attacked for doing what Christians have done for centuries -- teach their children what is right and wrong. Our struggles with these issues are in the practical realm: We have high ideals, but what can we do practically? This has been a lengthy process involving a lot of "talking it through"; and we would not enforce a recommended practice unless there were clear concensus among community members. One example: The decision as to how children should be disciplined is ultimately up to the parents themselves.
We are still living with the consequences of a community split in 1990 that resulted in two remnant communities: The Word of God Community on one hand and Washtenaw Covenant Community on the other. The split involved real issues of direction and questions concerning just how different we are going to be from the world around us. Since the split there has been a tremendous amount of charity and forbearance shown by members of both communities at the grass roots level. And by God's grace, current leaders of both communities are now able to meet together to seek ways to improve our relations. I see a strong desire to maintain friendships across the split and to remain brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of my friends are no longer in community, but we still socialize and we still help one another. We do share a common heritage and friendship.
The community split in 1990 was a massive crisis for us, but it forced people to make a heroic decision. They made the decision to remain a part of a covenant community in spite of others' believing it was harmful and wrong to do so. Much of our history was called into question -- "maybe we didn't hear God right." Though we are a much smaller group now, we did experience this as a reaffirmation: God did call us to community, to be a people. In the midst of the disintegration of natural community in our society, we are convinced that community is very important. Maybe not in exactly this form in every place, but a community of God's people is clearly needed today.