Koinonia

Koinonia is a bit of a buzzword. A lot of churches use it as a catchy name for an organization or a certain way of thinking about a church activity. It is not just because it is trendy to integrate Greek into programs. It is such a helpful word that captures much more than any English word might in translation. It means the common life of people, fellowship, cooperation, and sharing. It is bigger than a simple sharing of interests or affiliation. Koinonia is like building a brand new transcontinental railway. The people swinging the hammers in unison, harmonizing in labor songs, supping together after a day’s work, and sharing a tent for slumber.¹

Salem Presbyterian has an interesting history. We began as the 5 pm service of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, but this service was not a repeat of the morning gatherings. It flourished into its own cultural community, even a few years before we began meeting in West Salem. Now we are our own church, with a unique geographic footprint, and while our history roots our identity, in many ways we are searching for some markers to define our present and future.

That is why it says “est. 2013” on our bulletins. While we have bonds which run deep through Redeemer Presbyterian Church and our years as a site with the Redeemer Church Network, we ventured out on our own in 2013. There are perhaps two crucial ingredients that produced the church that is Salem Presbyterian Church – est. 2013. The first was the support and roots we have at Redeemer. Those are gone, but not forgotten — the way a person’s identity is forged in their childhood home, but with the reality that in adulthood it becomes one’s own responsibility to steward and cultivate that personhood. The other was what might be called “Friday Night Leadership.”

“Leadership” was the essence of koinonia. Before we had elders, servant leaders, a senior pastor, Google Docs, a church retreat, there was just a tall Associate Pastor named Ben and a crew of Christians interested in praying and taking on the work of the church. As the systems of our church became formalized it was difficult to figure out what to do with “Leadership” and attendance dwindled. It seemed there were now elders, servant leaders, staff, and of course Google docs capable of supporting the structure of the church. It was collateral damage in our maturation, but it might be for the better that we took a break from “Leadership” so as to learn how vital it was to healthy church.

Taking time to raise up leaders in shepherding and mercy ministry was really helpful for Salem Presbyterian Church. But it is apparent that we still need everybody to pray and work together — all of us! The common life of the church means coming together without too much official business to just worship God and bind together to make his body closer and more hospitable. Somewhere between our large worship gathering and our small group discipleship gatherings in homes, there needs to be a space where we get work done and leave space for informal prayer. “Leadership” might give the impression that certain leader qualifications might be necessary to participate. Of course back in the day, “Leadership” was the church’s leadership, but now we have official leaders. What we need to safeguard and recapture is the normal, everyday, knit together quality of laying track together, supping together, and resting together. That is why we are bringing koinonia into the mix.

We will gather quarterly to sing songs, pray, and divvy up little tasks giving every person in the church access to a little ownership on the work of Christ’s Kingdom in our little city of Winston-Salem. Each quarter we will focus on one facet of our threefold mission of Worship/Community/Outreach. Our first gathering will be focused on “community”, specifically our small groups and our late summer church retreat.

 

¹I do not mean to romanticize a history so rife with cultural violence and slavery, it is simply an effective metaphor.

One Less Lady

We live in the West Salem neighborhood of Winston-Salem, NC.  Our house teeters on the fence between gentrification and boarding houses, a dead end to our right, a small Christian College to our left.  Straight out the front door, we can see the victory gardens of the young and hip families in their pre-Depression Craftsmen homes, old enough to be affordable, freshly painted for the sake of looking presentable.  Out the back is the Interstate and a checkerboard of foreclosed properties shadowed by uncut grass.  Our front yard fits right in with the calculated earthiness of the middle class and our backyard in the a battlefield of carelessness.  In the forest of grass, weeds, dead trees live some special members of our community, our chickens.

Our little community consists of two houses, all boys, with one exception, Erin, my wife.  We even things out a little bit with a few hens to bring some femininity to our midst.  Excitement swelled as we erected our coop, the cozy abode where we would manifest our rejoinder to God’s assignment in Genesis to care for the creatures.  Once we got two hens, Margaret Thatcher and Ricki Lake laying, we decided to raise two more chicks from birth.  My dad, who lives in Manhattan, asked, “where do you get a chicken?”  Well its not very hard when your city bumps right against the rural South.  Erin is a mother, in her marrow.  We do not have kids yet, but she works in Maternal and Child public health with a community in Guatemala.  It was about time she had someone to raise up with her bursting affections.

The chicks, which Erin named Reepicheep and Cadbury, sprouted in our dining room, then the basement once they were escaping (and smelling) with greater frequency.  I remember holding our adult chickens and looking in their eyes, grateful to be the one with the feed and the drink.  They each have personalities.  Ricki has a sweet way about her, Margaret is loud and aggressive, Reepacheep is adventurous and alert, and Cadbury is the sweet little one.  Erin always wanted to name a chick Cadbury and when she came home, she was the one who let Erin hold her.  One day, Erin’s babies were no longer chicks.  They were teenage hens, gawky, tall, but awkward and slow.  They roamed the yard with the other two hens and while pecking order had to be established, no one was hurt, we just had two chicken cliques.

Our garden was a little beaten by the heat and a few weeks with slight rain when late July rolled around.  We were eager to see the chicks start laying eggs in a few weeks, a sign of creation and bloom.  I went out to check on them one morning and noticed all the Chickens were up in the nesting area.  Sleeping?  Laying?  None of them were roaming the open space in the bottom of the coop.  As I got closer however, I saw a lifeless Cadbury.  There was no blood, just this sweet chick, who suddenly looked smaller than she did yesterday.  No air in her lungs to inflate the cavity decorated by her red feathers.  I had to walk into the house and tell their mother that Cadbury had died…in my care.  They prospered and grew like corn in planes when Erin was the steward.  Erin cried and asked me in a defeated rhetoric, “why?”

When I retrieved the shovel from our basement, it scraped the concrete floor with such obnoxious volume, as if to taunt me with its purpose this day…to bury our sweet Cadbury.  We don’t know how she died.  Dehydration, disease, heat exhaustion, and there is little we can do to find out.  I was so angry when calloused fools would ask in front of Erin about the cause of death in a tone one might use to ask something like, “why did the mailman drop the neighbor’s package at our house?”  My annoyance was a distraction though, what was really going on was the surfacing of confession.  I had to confess to God, the creator of our sweet birds, that one suffered in my care.  Am I indictable for failure to care?  It is speculative at best, who knows what happened?  But failure, earth, heat…death triumphed on my watch.  Sorry God, sorry Erin, I may not do any better, but I promise to never forget what it meant to look at our sweet chickens’ eyes and be grateful as the proprietor of nourishment and shelter.