Scripture that is lived into by a body of believers comes alive in new stories
–Fitch, The Great Giveaway, p. 57

This is why I have been so attached to The Church of the Saviour, and to such experiments as Koinonia Farms begun by Clarence Jordan.  The Church of the Saviour has continued to provide accounts of their journeys,  most effectively in the pre-Web era by writer Elizabeth O’Connor.  The books she wrote always centered around the experiences of those communities in being church.  Those books induced many to make a pilgrimage to “visit” ,  and that number increased exponetially as those pilgrims returned to their homes and told of the things that they experienced and saw amongs the people of The Church of the Saviour.  Nowadays,  “The Church of the Saviour” is not one body, but several, independent churches,  but most of whom identify themselves in a “subtitle” such as “New Community Church: a body in The Church of the Saviour Tradition”.  This is also why I have so often longed for a “Web-enabled extension” prescence for churches such as this.  There is such an extensive body of stories, resources, discussion,  and theological reflection going on amongst these people that I cannot help but believe that the “connected” amongst them can/should be engaged in telling their story over this medium,  and blogging their journeys which are unmistakably intertwined with and reflective of their “Church of the Saviour Tradition”.  That tradition reflects a deep respect for the intgrity of church membership, mutual accountability,  commitment of personal and financial resources for the mission,  to be derived from the gifts amongst them.  They spend a great deal of energy and reflection on the matter of gifts;  evoking them, searching for them,  and discerning mission that derive from those gifts.  The expectation here is that THIS is the center of life.  It is unmistakably not a “setting aside of time” to “appreciate God” (although this is certainly one aspect of it);  it is an alternative life. It is about formation, commitment, radical belonging.  A direct opposite of the individualism and privatized spirituality of so much of Christendom today.