Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8432 Plough Quarterly • Autumn 2016 Your community, the Simple Way, started in 1997 as a com- munal household. What does it look like today? We originally moved in with ten people in a row house. Now it’s evolved to about ten properties all in the same neighborhood of Kensington, and we’re aiming to build a kind of village com- munity. Over the years, as a community we’ve been through romanticism and then disenchantment. Now we’re seeking about how to grow old together. How do we continue to love Jesus as passion- ately as when we were fifteen? And also: How do we get the dishes done? Who changes the oil in the car? We’re still figuring that out. Are there any mistakes or mis-turns that others can learn from? We’ve made all kinds of wonderful mistakes over these twenty years. But one thing we did well from the beginning was to say, “We aren’t choosing community, we’re choosing each other.” As Bonhoeffer said, we want not to be in love with our vision for community, but rather to love one another and the people around us. Community grows out of that. When people come to the Simple Way thinking they’re going to see fifteen people living together perfectly in this little drop of heaven on earth, yes, they’re disappointed. But what’s just as common is that people come away from visiting the Simple Way saying, “Wow, we can do this too! It’s not that spectacular.” We’ve got our share of lumps and bruises. In the end, my interest isn’t in people doing what the Simple Way does. My interest is that they should be who God made them to be and to find community in whatever form that takes. Ultimately, that means to fall in love with Jesus. What day-to-day practices in communal living have become especially important to you? In our early years, we picked up some important tools by visiting your community, the Bruderhof. One tool we learned from you was to create a culture where confession comes naturally – to make a space for people to say “I’m sorry.” The idea of confession and repen- tance is very countercultural in our world. Another tool we learned from the Bruderhof is the importance of straight talk: being able to talk directly to each other as Jesus tells us to in Mathew 18. That’s something we always have to keep getting back to. In his monastic rule, Saint Benedict warned against “murmuring,” by which he meant talking negatively about each other, which creates an environment that’s toxic for community. Communities like ours and yours are really like cells of the body. Cells are born and cells die, but the body lives. The great thing about having a community of communities, a body with cells, is that we can help each other out. What we do have in common is a focus on Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. That’s the lens through which we can understand Scrip- ture and understand the world that we live in. Past Church, Future Church Several newer Christian communities call them- selves “new monastics,” and the Simple Way has been called that as well. Are you a monastic? When we started a community and folks started calling it monasticism, I joked that some of my neighbors would be like, “I know you’re kind of nasty, but monasty?” So “new Young people aren’t leaving the church because we’ve made the gospel too hard but because we’ve made it too easy.