One of the common memes heard around subrban churches/church plants that I’ve been around has been this idea of creating intentional communities. If you will, designing aspects of the Christian experience – worship, fellowship, needs-addressing, social justice – as parts of the community that you live in. In some respects, this can look like a small (cell) group which meets for prayer/study, or it can look like a gathering to clean up/clean with the neighborhood to which the church meets.
In whatever case, the idea is that religion – or the behavior of faith – can be so ingrained into what we do that we miss that we actually live with one another. We’ve heard it said in several different ways, but its where this idea of intentional communities comes from – your faith is not what you do for 90 minutes on Sunday but what you do throughout the rest of your life in between those moments.
For some, this is not a problem. Many have been able to design their lifestyles around various religious and faith activities. In a sense, these folks are already intentional whether they realize it or not. Depending on where you live, the culture might also lean towards making a life of religion or faith one that crosses your path. I can recall how on Wednesday evenings how traffic seems much worse than normal between 5pm and 7pm (can it really be true that the entire city is making their way to a Bible study).
Intentional communities also have a prescription of people coming together for more than just their faith association. There’s also the meeting and sharing of ideas and concepts that are colored with various life experiences. Examples of this include the groups that may get together to bowl, watch a movie, conduct play-dates for their kids, talk shop about the latest motorcycles, etc. These communities aren’t just wedded by faith, but life experiences that allow the means for a community to develop in some manner.
Digital Disciples can also be looked at as an intentional community of sorts. The hook withing Digital Disciples is to come together because of faith, but have digital technology as one of the threads around which people can connect. And yes, digital is a very wide and encompassing word – for example, in one of the Digital Disciple meetings that met in Charlotte, we had myself (Antoine), a social media person, a developer, and a person who was geeky, but had none of those other contexts to their use of tech. And so, the conversations and fellowship had to fight a bit harder than some in order to find those digital ties that bind.
That’s no reason to not pursue such a fellowship. If anything that example with Digital Disciples should show how easy it is to assume that your context is the same, or will be received as gladly, as another’s. One of the lessons that I’ve learned with Digital Disciples so far is that you can’t come into it with your context as the primary filter that others will be able to grasp. You have to be able to live with others and it has to be an intentional dropping of your perceptions and expectations in order to do so.
So, if you are one of those techie-types looking for a community of geeks, you are definitely on the right road. Digital Disciples might even be a place to connect and get some of that connection in. But, I’d also caution you to keep your heart open for perspectives and contexts that are digital, but not yours. Intentions have a way of being turned towards unexpected blessings when that happens.
For more information about Digital Disciples, check out the website. If you are looking to connect with a Digital Disciples group in your area, there’s a list of places at Meetup. Either connect with an existing city/group, or propose a city/group/time.