Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Intentional Community in Denver

[Hune Margulies (hm64]

There are many different and indeed contradictory views of what 
Christianity teaches concerning community life and the search for 
material commodities as an end in itself. Can you expand a bit on the 
sources of your thinking and the model of Christian-communal life you 
follow? Thanks.

On Mon, 5 Sep 1994, Brent Rollings wrote:

> 
> 
>  
>  
> Date: Sun, 31 Jul 94 15:04 EST
> From: William Johnson <0005638134 [at] mcimail.com>
> To: COHOUSING-L <cohousing-l [at] uci.com>
> Message-ID: <83940731200438/0005638134PK2EM [at] mcimail.com>
>  
>  
> William I'm sorry that this reply took almost two weeks, but I'm working alot 
> of
> Overtime and wanted to give some consideration to your questions.
>  
> On Sun, 31 Jul 94 William Johnson wrote:
>  
> >Can you help me visualize Shepherd's Gate?   ... # of floors, unit sizes, 
> >etc?
> >In what ballpark were the costs?   ... purchase, renovation, costs per 
> >family?
>  
> Shepherd's Gate is a three story brick building. It was origionally built as a
> duplexin 1911. When we acquired the building almost four years ago, it had
> beensubdivided intoseven units and was being rented as apartments.  Each unit
> has a kitchen, bathroom,living, and bedroom space. One unit on the main floor
> is our "Community Space" and isused in common by all of us.  Five of the units
> are occupied by families and one unitis used for transitional housing or guest
> space.  We have a common laundry room in thebasement and storage area. 
>  
> The purchase price was xxxxx.  There were five families in the original group.
> Four ofthose wanted 'ownership' in the house, and one wanted to live in the
> community for twoyears and then leave.  The family who did not want own part
> of the building came to aconsensus with the other families about what would be
> a fair 'rent' for their space. The mortgage was split four ways. Each family 
> had
> a different amount to put down, soeach of the four have different monthly
> payments based on that. Each family pays amonthly fee ($275) on top of
> mortgages that goes into a common fund. House repairs, andother things to be
> used in common are purchased out of this fund on a consensus basis.We have
> bi-weekly business meetings during which we discuss these types of things.
>  
>  
> >Most importantly, can you elaborate on the "common ideological base" at
> >Shepherd's Gate?
>  
> Well that is a little harder to answer.  We are all "Christians" of one 
> flavor or
> another.  We are all commited to some type of common life influenced by Christ
> and histeaching. That does, however, mean different things to each of us. I 
> can
> speak formyself by saying that the life of the Absolute Individual that has 
> been
> the ideal in oursociety is not enough.  We all need some type of life greater
> than our isolated egoexistance, for me that is Shepherd's Gate.  
>  
> We do have a list of "Understandings" that we have come to in our discussions
> together.One of those is that our priorities should be self, family and 
> community
> in that order. We each have to be true to ourselves first, but that is only 
> the
> beginning. Sadly, manyfamilies in our society aren't working very well now and
> almost no one has a sense ofreal community. Many people subsitute a
> pseudo-community like work, a sport.  But if welose ourself by putting family
> first, or lose our family by putting community (orpseudo-community) first we
> have lost everything. I think this was what Jesus was talkingabout when he
> said, "What good would it do if a person gained the entire world only tolose
> their soul?" (paraphrase)
>  
> We caught alot of abuse from families and friends because the problem with
> David Koreshand the Branch Davidians happened about a year after the
> community was formed. I thinkthat this is a classic case of priorities gone
> wrong. In their case the community was the Leader and the Leader was the
> community: a recipe for disaster.
>  
>  
>  
> 
> --
>  _______________________________________________________________________
> | Brent Rollings  -- am770 [at] freenet.hsc.colorado.edu                     
> |     
> |  "No heart is pure that is not passionate,                            |
> |     and no virtue secure that is not enthusiastic. " Baron D'Holbach  |
>