home
Who We Are
People
Documents
Introduction Letter
Site Outline
Mission
Spirituality
Relationships
What's New
Links<
Come Visit
Village Store
Contact Us
Plow
Creek Mennonite Church |
home
Documents
| People
of
Plow Creek | Brochure
Shalom Mission Communities
Brochure
Invitation to
Christian Intentional Community with
Church of the Sojourners
Plow Creek Fellowship
Hope Community &
Reba Place Fellowship
Community--Our Response to Jesus
Church of the Sojourners
Plow Creek Fellowship
Hope Community &
Reba Place Fellowship
Community--Our Response to Jesus
We stumble through our days wondering
why we
are here. Misled by our
culture and our fallen nature, we end up spending our days and wasting
our lives serving ourselves. There has to be more.
As humans we have this divine inkling that the purpose of our lives will be found in loving. And yet, unless we know how deeply we are loved, how can we risk really living and giving ourselves away?
Our hearts have been stirred by the invitation of Jesus to his disciples, “Come and follow me,” to learn a new way of giving ourselves and becoming human in community. Our inspiration has been Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the witnesses of the early church, who were “One in heart and mind, . . . and there was no one in the group who was in need.” Life in community, with flawed and broken people like ourselves, is our response to Jesus' total gift of himself.
Shalom Mission Communities:
We are four Christian intentional communities with a shared vision and history of friendship. Our relationships have grown into bonds of love and commitment, which we are eager to share with you.
Evanston IL: Reba Place Fellowship began in 1957 in what has become an ethnically diverse neighborhood in south Evanston. Its forty-some members and children now live in large multi-family homes and apartment buildings in Evanston and in Rogers Park, in north Chicago. Reba sponsors an affordable-housing ministry for many low-income families. Fellowship members work in shared community ministries and in “outside” earning jobs, mostly in the service professions.
Reba Place Fellowship's long-term commitment to its local neighborhoods has encouraged the formation of two congregations, and given life to a couple of cooperative “villages” within the city. In recent years Reba has worked to review its structures, to become a more reconciling and empowering presence within its racially diverse neighborhoods. After 42 years of community experience, Reba is still under construction.
Tiskilwa IL: Plow Creek Fellowship members are part of Plow Creek Church located on Plow Creek Farm, about two hours west of Chicago, near the small town of Tiskilwa, Illinois. During the summer, much work is focused on the farm when the community maintains pick-your-own berry fields and provides wholesome foods for local farmers' markets. Members also carry earning jobs in the wider community as carpenters, social workers, teachers, and administrators. With its retreat cabin and guest rooms, Plow Creek is a place of renewal for many city friends and visitors.
The Plow Creek community, numbering about 50 adults and children, often includes a rich international mix of exchange visitors from sister communities in El Salvador and Spain. Plow Creek was planted by “colonists” from Reba Place in 1972. In recent years Plow Creek has been tested and transformed by some profound struggles. But God has proved faithful, giving a renewal of love and an influx of new people.
Waco, TX: Hope Community members live communally and lend their support to Hope Fellowship, a house church which meets in a lower-income neighborhood of north Waco. In the life of the body. Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, creating a diverse bicultural fellowship. Spanish and English are spoken freely in worship, in meetings, and on a daily basis through the sharing of life, friendship and mutual aid. A significant portion of the church members live within a few blocks of each other.
The Fellowship is committed to growth in discipleship and in the ministry of all its members. Leadership from within the body has been blessed and ordained in a number of areas. Several members are involved as employees or volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and in World Hunger Relief, a Christian ministry based on a farm just north of Waco. In addition to SMC, Hope Fellowship has affiliated itself with the Mid-Texas Mennonites.
San Francisco CA: Church of the Sojourners consists of 30 people, including those who are pursuing membership. Its purpose is to “be the Church for the world” in the vibrant, pagan, jam-packed city of San Francisco. It seeks to be a people who live by God's ways (especially sacrificial love and covenantal faithfulness) in a way that outsiders notice. Through its network of family and neighborhood relationships, the community has many opportunities to invite outsiders into its life, sharing God's love and fidelity with them—one at a time.
Most summers Church of the Sojourners conducts a summer program for teens or college students with a core teaching on the “Nature and Purpose of the Church.” The volunteers in turn run a reading program or a vacation Bible school for neighborhood kids who are mostly Latino. The community's breadwinners work in regular jobs, many of them in human services and healing professions. The breadwinners support a small army of pastors, teachers, administrators, youth workers, and writers who serve the church full time. “We are highly educated (most are college graduates), overly earnest over achievers, but God is gracious and keeps sending us new life and joy anyway!”
Stability: We desire community bonds that will uphold us in lifelong commitment to service in Jesus' name, remaining faithful to our brothers and sisters in their needs through all of life's stages. We want to remain faithful in our relationships, to confess our sins, and forgive one another. We want to commit ourselves, with God's help, to give and receive admonition according to Matthew 18:15-20
Non-Violence and Self-giving love: Jesus calls us to love our enemies as he has loved us. We are committed to a non-violent struggle for justice in solidarity with the oppressed of our world. We want to resist racism and all other powers that divide our human family, seeking a life of repentance and reconciliation with all.
Leadership: The Holy Spirit has given gifts of service to each member of our communities. Among these are gifts of leadership “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building of up the Body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:1-16)
Since many persons in our society and in our communities have been wounded by their experience of leadership, we want our communities to be places of healing, accountability and growing trust—where each person can be heard and where leadership is open to all according to God's gifts and calling.
To this end our communities have procedures for reviewing and commissioning leaders in which all members participate. Leadership will normally function in a team approach. We open our communities to the counsel and support of other Shalom Mission Communities in periodic visitations, to review our body life and our experience of leadership.
Possessions: We renounce personal possessions as our security, and we reject accumulation of possessions as our goal. Instead, all we have belongs to God. We trust God to care for us in a body of mutual aid and radical sharing. We are called to an ongoing conversion of life that is especially shaped by our experience of Jesus in the weak, the poor and marginal.
Sexuality: We accept celibacy for singles and chastity in marriage for husband and wife. Commitment to singleness for the Lord's sake is a real option, with community recognition and support.
Vocations: Our vocations are found in Christian servanthood and community, rather than in pursuing personal careers wherever they might lead us. At the same time, we want to assist each one to discern and develop the gifts God has given, so they can be of practical service for the Kingdom.
Decision-Making: We want to live in mutual submission for the sake of the Gospel, accountable to one another in our lifestyles and basic decisions. We present ourselves ready to stay in community or to be sent in mission, according to God's call as discerned in our community.
Family: Our family responsibilities are supported by community so that our service need not be limited to our families.
Spirituality: We accept the need for community disciplines that shape a common life of prayer, Bible study and worship, so that the Holy Spirit can teach and lead us together concerning what we should do and how we should live.
Good News: In Jesus the world has good news, which we are privileged to share and to proclaim. The power of sin is broken, making community possible! By his death on the cross we also die and are set free to live for the One who has loved us—empowered to risk all for the Kingdom of God because of the resurrection which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
An invitation to...
Individuals and families: This way of serving Jesus in community is not better than other ways of being Christian, nor is it advisable for everyone to try it. Still, in a society that relentlessly pursues consumption, power and self, we find that Christ-centered community helps us to love and to serve with more abandon and more trust than we could ever sustain by ourselves. A good way to test if this might be your calling would be to pay us a visit, which we would be glad to arrange.
Other communities: Beyond the circle of Shalom Mission Communities, we are also part of a wider network (which we sometimes call “Shalom Connections”) of other groups more loosely affiliated, who sustain and inspire us on this shared journey. Shalom Connections is a quarterly newsletter by which we try to stay in touch with friends and “fellow travelers” in the Christian intentional community movement.
If other communities wish to explore membership in Shalom Mission Communities, the door is open through informal visits and participation in Shalom events like retreats and conferences. In these ways we hope to get to know each other better, and to test if God is blessing our dialogues with unity in spirit and truth.
How to find us:
Church of the Sojourners
c/o Laura and Jeff Hare
866 Potrero Ave.
San Francisco CA 94110
415-824-1274
web: http://www.churchofthesojourners.org/
info@churchofthesojourners.org
Plow Creek Fellowship
c/o Louise Stahnke
19183 Plow Creek Rd.
Tiskilwa IL 61368
815-646-4264
web: http://www.plowcreek.org
pcmc1@plowcreek.org
Hope Fellowship
c/o Ruth Alexander Boardman
1700 Morrow
Waco TX 76707
254-754-5942
web: http://directory.mennoniteusa.org/congregation.asp?CongregationID=402
hopefellowship@grandecom.net
Reba Place Fellowship
c/o David Janzen
P.O. Box 6575
Evanston IL 60202
847-328-6066
web: http://rebaplacefellowship.org/
R_P_F@juno.com
To get on our newsletter mailing list, or to share news from your community, contact:
Shalom Connections
726 Seward #2
Evanston IL 60202
847-475-8715
dj-janzen@juno.com
“My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. John 15:8-9
As humans we have this divine inkling that the purpose of our lives will be found in loving. And yet, unless we know how deeply we are loved, how can we risk really living and giving ourselves away?
Our hearts have been stirred by the invitation of Jesus to his disciples, “Come and follow me,” to learn a new way of giving ourselves and becoming human in community. Our inspiration has been Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the witnesses of the early church, who were “One in heart and mind, . . . and there was no one in the group who was in need.” Life in community, with flawed and broken people like ourselves, is our response to Jesus' total gift of himself.
Shalom Mission Communities:
We are four Christian intentional communities with a shared vision and history of friendship. Our relationships have grown into bonds of love and commitment, which we are eager to share with you.
Evanston IL: Reba Place Fellowship began in 1957 in what has become an ethnically diverse neighborhood in south Evanston. Its forty-some members and children now live in large multi-family homes and apartment buildings in Evanston and in Rogers Park, in north Chicago. Reba sponsors an affordable-housing ministry for many low-income families. Fellowship members work in shared community ministries and in “outside” earning jobs, mostly in the service professions.
Reba Place Fellowship's long-term commitment to its local neighborhoods has encouraged the formation of two congregations, and given life to a couple of cooperative “villages” within the city. In recent years Reba has worked to review its structures, to become a more reconciling and empowering presence within its racially diverse neighborhoods. After 42 years of community experience, Reba is still under construction.
Tiskilwa IL: Plow Creek Fellowship members are part of Plow Creek Church located on Plow Creek Farm, about two hours west of Chicago, near the small town of Tiskilwa, Illinois. During the summer, much work is focused on the farm when the community maintains pick-your-own berry fields and provides wholesome foods for local farmers' markets. Members also carry earning jobs in the wider community as carpenters, social workers, teachers, and administrators. With its retreat cabin and guest rooms, Plow Creek is a place of renewal for many city friends and visitors.
The Plow Creek community, numbering about 50 adults and children, often includes a rich international mix of exchange visitors from sister communities in El Salvador and Spain. Plow Creek was planted by “colonists” from Reba Place in 1972. In recent years Plow Creek has been tested and transformed by some profound struggles. But God has proved faithful, giving a renewal of love and an influx of new people.
Waco, TX: Hope Community members live communally and lend their support to Hope Fellowship, a house church which meets in a lower-income neighborhood of north Waco. In the life of the body. Jesus has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, creating a diverse bicultural fellowship. Spanish and English are spoken freely in worship, in meetings, and on a daily basis through the sharing of life, friendship and mutual aid. A significant portion of the church members live within a few blocks of each other.
The Fellowship is committed to growth in discipleship and in the ministry of all its members. Leadership from within the body has been blessed and ordained in a number of areas. Several members are involved as employees or volunteers with Habitat for Humanity and in World Hunger Relief, a Christian ministry based on a farm just north of Waco. In addition to SMC, Hope Fellowship has affiliated itself with the Mid-Texas Mennonites.
San Francisco CA: Church of the Sojourners consists of 30 people, including those who are pursuing membership. Its purpose is to “be the Church for the world” in the vibrant, pagan, jam-packed city of San Francisco. It seeks to be a people who live by God's ways (especially sacrificial love and covenantal faithfulness) in a way that outsiders notice. Through its network of family and neighborhood relationships, the community has many opportunities to invite outsiders into its life, sharing God's love and fidelity with them—one at a time.
Most summers Church of the Sojourners conducts a summer program for teens or college students with a core teaching on the “Nature and Purpose of the Church.” The volunteers in turn run a reading program or a vacation Bible school for neighborhood kids who are mostly Latino. The community's breadwinners work in regular jobs, many of them in human services and healing professions. The breadwinners support a small army of pastors, teachers, administrators, youth workers, and writers who serve the church full time. “We are highly educated (most are college graduates), overly earnest over achievers, but God is gracious and keeps sending us new life and joy anyway!”
Shared Commitments
We are groups quite
different from each other, yet gathered by Jesus'
love and call to discipleship in a community context. We desire the
support and encouragement of our brothers and sisters of the Shalom
Mission Communities to faithfully live out the following commitments:Stability: We desire community bonds that will uphold us in lifelong commitment to service in Jesus' name, remaining faithful to our brothers and sisters in their needs through all of life's stages. We want to remain faithful in our relationships, to confess our sins, and forgive one another. We want to commit ourselves, with God's help, to give and receive admonition according to Matthew 18:15-20
Non-Violence and Self-giving love: Jesus calls us to love our enemies as he has loved us. We are committed to a non-violent struggle for justice in solidarity with the oppressed of our world. We want to resist racism and all other powers that divide our human family, seeking a life of repentance and reconciliation with all.
Leadership: The Holy Spirit has given gifts of service to each member of our communities. Among these are gifts of leadership “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building of up the Body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:1-16)
Since many persons in our society and in our communities have been wounded by their experience of leadership, we want our communities to be places of healing, accountability and growing trust—where each person can be heard and where leadership is open to all according to God's gifts and calling.
To this end our communities have procedures for reviewing and commissioning leaders in which all members participate. Leadership will normally function in a team approach. We open our communities to the counsel and support of other Shalom Mission Communities in periodic visitations, to review our body life and our experience of leadership.
Possessions: We renounce personal possessions as our security, and we reject accumulation of possessions as our goal. Instead, all we have belongs to God. We trust God to care for us in a body of mutual aid and radical sharing. We are called to an ongoing conversion of life that is especially shaped by our experience of Jesus in the weak, the poor and marginal.
Sexuality: We accept celibacy for singles and chastity in marriage for husband and wife. Commitment to singleness for the Lord's sake is a real option, with community recognition and support.
Vocations: Our vocations are found in Christian servanthood and community, rather than in pursuing personal careers wherever they might lead us. At the same time, we want to assist each one to discern and develop the gifts God has given, so they can be of practical service for the Kingdom.
Decision-Making: We want to live in mutual submission for the sake of the Gospel, accountable to one another in our lifestyles and basic decisions. We present ourselves ready to stay in community or to be sent in mission, according to God's call as discerned in our community.
Family: Our family responsibilities are supported by community so that our service need not be limited to our families.
Spirituality: We accept the need for community disciplines that shape a common life of prayer, Bible study and worship, so that the Holy Spirit can teach and lead us together concerning what we should do and how we should live.
Good News: In Jesus the world has good news, which we are privileged to share and to proclaim. The power of sin is broken, making community possible! By his death on the cross we also die and are set free to live for the One who has loved us—empowered to risk all for the Kingdom of God because of the resurrection which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.
An invitation to...
Individuals and families: This way of serving Jesus in community is not better than other ways of being Christian, nor is it advisable for everyone to try it. Still, in a society that relentlessly pursues consumption, power and self, we find that Christ-centered community helps us to love and to serve with more abandon and more trust than we could ever sustain by ourselves. A good way to test if this might be your calling would be to pay us a visit, which we would be glad to arrange.
Other communities: Beyond the circle of Shalom Mission Communities, we are also part of a wider network (which we sometimes call “Shalom Connections”) of other groups more loosely affiliated, who sustain and inspire us on this shared journey. Shalom Connections is a quarterly newsletter by which we try to stay in touch with friends and “fellow travelers” in the Christian intentional community movement.
If other communities wish to explore membership in Shalom Mission Communities, the door is open through informal visits and participation in Shalom events like retreats and conferences. In these ways we hope to get to know each other better, and to test if God is blessing our dialogues with unity in spirit and truth.
How to find us:
Church of the Sojourners
c/o Laura and Jeff Hare
866 Potrero Ave.
San Francisco CA 94110
415-824-1274
web: http://www.churchofthesojourners.org/
info@churchofthesojourners.org
Plow Creek Fellowship
c/o Louise Stahnke
19183 Plow Creek Rd.
Tiskilwa IL 61368
815-646-4264
web: http://www.plowcreek.org
pcmc1@plowcreek.org
Hope Fellowship
c/o Ruth Alexander Boardman
1700 Morrow
Waco TX 76707
254-754-5942
web: http://directory.mennoniteusa.org/congregation.asp?CongregationID=402
hopefellowship@grandecom.net
Reba Place Fellowship
c/o David Janzen
P.O. Box 6575
Evanston IL 60202
847-328-6066
web: http://rebaplacefellowship.org/
R_P_F@juno.com
To get on our newsletter mailing list, or to share news from your community, contact:
Shalom Connections
726 Seward #2
Evanston IL 60202
847-475-8715
dj-janzen@juno.com
“My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. John 15:8-9