Urban Immersion: Homestead Heritage

"Having attained the age of sixteen years, I began to love wanton company, and though I was preserved from profane language or scandalous conduct, still I perceived a plant in me which produced much wild grapes."  Fitting words from John Woolman, the 18th-centuray Quaker spiritual mentor who spoke so highly of the necessity of pacifism, the care for nature, and the evil of slavery in regards to "walking in the light as [Christ] is in the light" (1 Jn 1.7).

The second stop on our Urban Immersion spring break journey was near Waco, Texas, at a simple agrarian Christian community of almost 1000 members called Homestead Heritage.  This community began with a small group of folks in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, in the 1970s.  They desired to create intentional Christian community there, and struggled for many years.  In their attempts to following the leading of God, they eventually came to know they needed to create a place away from the worldly forces of "the city" and live simply—a place they found in a few hundred acres outside of Waco.

They felt like Woolman (themselves being greatly influenced by the Friends and Mennonite traditions), being surrounded by a culture that grew "wild grapes" instead of the fruit of the Christian life as they knew it.

"It's hard to grow bananas in Alaska," a number of the members would keep telling us.

The simplicity of life at Homestead Heritage felt so comfortable and welcoming to me.  They use as little technology as they "discern" that they can—which, for now still includes cars, SUVs, and iPhones, due to the spread out nature of their land and members.  But their buildings are log cabins, or refurbished barns (from 1700s and earlier New England areas); they make their own dishes in their pottery mill, their own furniture in the woodshop, their own food with a sustainable rotation of crops, their own metal items in the blacksmith's forge.

Until you walk into their chapel and see a massive array of realistic grape clusters, vines, and leaves, all made of iron by hand, plus beautiful stained glass windows made by community members as well, you will not understand how excellent this community is at everything that they do.

Seeing all of this showed me the importance of teaching skills to people so that they might grow in independence, empowerment, character, perseverance, and temperament.  We live in a world of modernity in which masses of people are subject massive, national systems based on utilizing oil.  Homestead Heritage shows how civilization endures while living in as close harmony with nature as they can at the moment, and most especially how 1000 people can live in deep relationships (which they parallel with marriage) by "submitting to God and submitting to each other."

In my own ministry, I want to find ways in which to build Christian community in a place where people who do not have much personal power can gain it, through encouragement and through learning skills that allow folks to see the work of their hands, to take part in the collective effort of Christ's Body showing off the "multifaceted wisdom" (Eph. 3.10) inherent within it to sustain itself and feed those outside of it.

The greatest blessing they gave to me, however, was the conversation I had with Dan, one of their ministers.  I understand the logic of a climate determining what fruit grows there, but then I see so many people still left in "the city"—materially and esoterically—so what hope is there for those folks to see the fruit of simplicity and community which Homestead Heritage fosters?

It was Dan's own idea that it is possible to create a "greenhouse" even in Alaska to grow the specific fruit of life for which we aim.  I'll need to know what those glass walls (not literal) will look like, to know what kind of soil is fertile to the fruit of the Spirit (Matthew 13 & Mark 4 anyone?), and to have a group of people already experienced in tending that kind of garden before planting it in the cold, concrete plain to which God calls me.

What that exactly will look like, I don't know—but I'm thankful for Homestead Heritage planting a seed for my own dreams of life in the Kingdom of God.