Listen to POP Community members discussion the momentum behind Intentional Communities with Provoke Radio.
Click to hear Audio
Here’s the intro to the Audio Interview:
In the beginning was the “house church.†And it was good. For the first three centuries of the early church, Christians met in private homes – to celebrate faith, to share fellowship, and to break bread. They gathered as small, intimate communities sharing both spiritual and physical nourishment.
Two thousand years and 2 billion Christians later, the house church is all but gone, replaced by everything from tiny chapels to soaring cathedrals. And though the venue has changed, the purpose remains the same. Believers still gather to worship and break bread. Indeed, for 1 billion Catholic Christians, the Eucharist is the centerpiece of faith. Yet, what should be a sacramental moment of holy communion with God and each other has, for many, become a hollow ritual we all but sleepwalk through. Fellowship – table or otherwise – is often completely missing.
For the sleepwalkers, this is just fine. But many others, Catholics in particular, yearn for something more. They long for the spirit that filled the early house churches. Not satisfied to settle for what passes as a faith community today, many look elsewhere. Not so much outside the Church as outside the traditional parish setting. Forming their own small faith communities, they are sustained in ways that enrich and renew.
These groups are called “intentional communities†and chances are, there’s one near you. Listen in as our guests discuss the origins of their own intentional communities, why they joined one, how they’re different and what Vatican 2 had to do with any of it. It gives whole, new and invigorating meaning to “being churchâ€.
Guests: William D’Antonio of Catholic University, member of the Washington DC based community called, Communitas and contributor to such books as: The Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities; American Catholics Today and others. Kathleen Kautzer of Regis College in Boston and author of the soon to be published book, The Underground Church; Fr. Walter Cuenin and Sr. Marie LaBollita, pastoral leaders of a new intentional community at Brandeis University and John Moynihan, Rosemary Oliver, Mary Troy, Chris Tree and Steve Alcott of a 35 year old intentional community in the Boston area known as People of the Promise.
