My Dream

The past two months I spent in
Mexico were probably the most amazing two months of my life. God taught me more
than I would have thought possible especially about the teachings of Jesus and
how he taught us how to live. One of the things that stuck with me the most is living
communally which is found throughout the life of Jesus and within the first few
chapters of Acts. This passage from Acts 2:44-47 does a great job at summing up
what the early church looked like.

All the believers were together and had everything
in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had
need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They
broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to
their number daily those who were being saved.

They lived together, they sold
everything and gave to the poor, they shared everything, they made disciples.
The more I learned about this the more I began to examine my life and the
church of today. Sadly, the church of the 21^st century looks almost
nothing like the early church and God has said that he wants me to do something
about it. He has given me visions daily on how to do this and each day I get
more and more excited about it.

Right now I am in the beginning
stages of helping out with the building of a worldwide community that has a
goal of being like the church of the first few centuries. A few committed
people and I have decided to sell just about everything we own and start a new
life of making disciples and living communally. We are planning on starting out
in Atlanta and growing to the rest of the world. Each community will have
people of all ages and everyone will live together. Some will have jobs, some
will live on support but all will share everything and all will be committed to
introducing people to the Savior. Once one community grows large enough, we
will split up and start another one where ever in the world God leads us.

Each community will have one
major ministry and many smaller ones. For example, a friend of mine wants to
eventually start a community in India where his major ministry would be to
rescue sex slaves and get them back up on their feet. They would have rescue
teams, rehab centers, counseling, job training, discipleship and anything else
necessary for getting the former slaves on their way to a “normal” life. But
the community will not limit itself to that ministry. They will have feeding
programs for the poor, care for the orphans and whatever opportunities God
places in front of them. As a strong, unified community, they would work
together in making disciples out of everyone they meet. 

The plan so far looks about like
this. I return home on May 15 and I will be there for about a month or so. From
there I will move to Atlanta with the few who are already committed and whoever
else wants to join this movement. I will start by moving in with my friend
Myles and begin planting this community and a church. Starting in the fall I
will most likely commit about two years to leading trips with AIM in order to
learn more about starting community and to serve the participants on the trips.
During the time that I am not on trips or back home with my family I will live
in the community and continue building it. Eventually there will be communities
all around the world connected to each other serving God.

I am not exactly sure of my part
in all this but God gave me a vision of what my role will be after the two
years of leading trips with AIM. Picture a body with AIM being the heart and
the community in Atlanta being the lungs and all the other communities around
the world being the different body parts. In this body I would be like the
veins and arteries keeping AIM and all the individual communities connected as
well as getting new communities planted around the world. My dream is to have
AIM send missionaries to the communities to live there and do ministry along
with the people who live in the communities. I would be the person getting
those trips organized and maybe even leading them. Once again, I’m not
completely sure if this will be my exact role in all this but I’m sure it will
be pretty close to this.

So this is my invitation to you
to pray about this. Pray for the community, pray for visions and pray for
perseverance. But more than any of those things I want you to pray about your
part in all this. Ask God if he wants you to live in this community. And when
he speaks to you, do what he says. If you have any questions please ask them. I
honestly cannot wait to answer them.