Should we all eat from one plate? Reflections on Community and Culture

We love our community.  Most of the time we love having people around all the time, lives shared, prayer happening every weekday morning, a feeling of an extended family on mission. We love seeing our core team daily and it feels like ages if we don’t see them for a day. Yesterday’s stories are old news, and every day we get to share the latest things God is doing in our lives and the lives of those around us. 

Some of our community eating at Shaun and Amanda's house

People come from around the world and from different churches in Peru too, to spend time with us, to experience what we ‘do’, to see how God is moving, to share our lives.  

But it would be a mistake for us to think that our community should be replicated elsewhere.  Sure there are things that inspire, things that are encouraging, things that are good.  But it is wrong to think that just because God is doing something here, the same formula will ‘work’ elsewhere. 

When we spend time with the Shipibo people in the Amazon jungle town of Pucallpa and further up the river, we see community played out in different ways.  The men and the women often divide up the different tasks (men traditionally hunt, fish and gather food, make shelter, boats etc, and women cook and do the majority of the child and house care.) 

For us there is a temptation to think about how our values and culture can be placed onto them.  How we can teach them to adopt our culture?  But it is not about that. Of course there are values and practical biblical practices (prayer, eating together, generosity etc.) that can be encouraged but how that looks is going to be very different to how it looks for us in Lima. And really it is Mark and my heart for the people we work with that they take ownership of how things look - we might provide some scaffolding, but the end result and how it looks is up to them. 

When I was recently in the jungle the Shipibo women were telling me about how they often eat in community already, but in a very organic way.  (Nothing like our rota-ed, weekly planned and bought military effort!) Each day the women prepare a meal and then they may call a neighbour or family members who live nearby and they will come and bring a pot of food to share.  The food is all divided up into different bowls - one for the men, one for the women and one for the children.  They then sit on the floor around the bowl, in little groups, one sat behind another so there is space for more people to get in, and eat the food from a communal bowl.  

The Shipibo women showing me how they eat their food together traditionally. 

Believe me, when I saw that idea, I wondered if it would work in Lima - it would certainly save a lot of washing up! But organic, waiting for people to turn up with food, would be much more stressful than life-giving for us in Lima, where freedom comes from planning out each day and knowing who’s turn it is to cook.  

Even in Lima, community life does not, nor should it look the same with the different communities that we are involved with.  We have close friends who are starting to disciple others in community, and they look at what we are doing with mainly full-time foreign and Peruvian missionaries - eating every lunchtime, praying together every morning and that is just too much for them and their community where many of them work in salaried jobs.  Many of their friends are involved in the music scene too which is overnight and means they are on a totally different schedule.  They need a much more organic, whoever-is-available-when-they-are-available flexibility, for their form of community, which may include overnight prayer and worship times (using drums, turn-tables and vinyls) once a week rather than a daily routine. 

It is freeing for me to know that once again the real answer is not: how can I transport this community into mine, but rather: what is God saying to me, and how am I going to respond? 

Really is it about us drawing close to God in relationship and asking Him how we can create community where we are at, with those we are walking out life with Jesus together. And I love that, because it would be a disaster if we didn’t need God to work it all out! Because He cares much more about our relationship with Him than he does about how we do all that we do. 

So what is God saying to you about creating community? 
How are you going to respond?