Better Life Community: An Introduction

 Earlier this week, I started a Meet-up group called "Better Life Community - Roseville." Starting this community, or something like it, is something I've been thinking about since I left Christianity, or in some ways, before I left Christianity. I wasn't particularly happy with the way I saw most Christian communities doing church.

I decided to start it now both because I need this community now and also because I think my life is more or less stable enough that I can handle getting it going. If you're reading this, you probably doing care much about my personal story getting here and even if you do, that's probably something better for a conversation over coffee than it is a blog post....

So, what are my goals with this community? What am I trying to create? And how do I plan to get it off the ground?

First, let's talk about goals. I want a community that encourages people to be their best selves, to improve their local community and also to enjoy life. The group would facilitate educational opportunities and discussions. It would create space for identifying goals of individual members and encourage those members to achieve those goals. It would identify opportunities to improve the local community and act on them. And - it would be fun and encourage people to have fun.

Also, it wouldn't be dogmatic. This is very important to me. I happen to be a practicing Stoic, a Humanist and am influenced by all sorts of other ideas and lenses, but... I'm not interested in forming a group to create replicas of myself. I don't even want an insular group. Instead, I want to create something that is always bringing in new ideas and interacting with various groups on the outside. While I think every community needs a core, I think that communities where the lines between insiders and outsiders is too clearly delineated or where the line between ideas we accept and ideas we don't it too strict... well, I think that can be a bad thing. 

How do I get it off the ground? Well, I think every successful community like this develops with a good mix of direct leadership and organic growth. You someone with vision and I've definitely got one, but the implementation of that vision needs to be guided, often altered, by the community sharing it. The visionary is often wrong, particularly about implementation. 

Nevertheless, here are my current ideas. I'm starting three separate groups, Roseville Runners, Better Life Community and Roseville Beautification Volunteer Core (not quite sure on the name here yet). The groups are separate, but have overlapping goals. The runners group will help people improve their fitness levels and hopefully increase use of public parks. The Beautification group will improve those parks. And the Better Life Community will be more about philosophy, philanthropy and fun, but will also encourage an active life. 

All three groups are intended both to work together from time to time and also to collaborate with outside entities, both other Meet-ups and also Civic organizations. 

And that brings me to my philosophy on leadership and collaboration with other groups. While I believe that self-improvement, community improvement and life enjoyment are uncontroversially good goals, my views on how best to achieve this, my methods and even those of the communities of which I am a part, will not always be best. Even when they're great, they will be incomplete in both the knowledge informing their approach and the talents and skills enabling their implementation. On account of this, I can't successfully achieve my goals without both the cooperation and even leadership of others. 

Let's take the running group as an example. A good running group should have a good stretch routine. Now, I do know quite a bit about stretching, both because I'm a Soldier and we do a stretch routine after our workouts and also because I happen to have fairly tight hamstrings. But, I don't have a strong history with yoga. Over time, no doubt, someone who joins the running group will have that background. It only makes sense for that person to lead us in stretching. If we don't find such a person, and even if we do, it might only make sense for the Roseville Runners, once and a while to collaborate with a group that focuses on yoga or stretching for the obvious reason that we'll learn new things and meet new people, but also because this sort of cross-pollination enriches the community at large. 

If this sounds interesting to you and you're in the area, here's a link to our Meet-up group
https://www.meetup.com/better-life-community-of-macomb-county/

My Neighbor's Faith #1: Evangel Christian Ministries in Roseville, Michigan

In the Spring of 2001, I was waiting table at the Ram's Horn one evening when the pastor from Evangel Temple, a large church on Utica road just down the street, walked in with several other members of the church. Somehow, I started a conversation with them about their church.  It wasn't long before the pastor invited me to stop by.

As it happens, this was during a period of my life when I attended a church that met mid-afternoon, so I split my Sunday mornings between a retirement home ministry and visiting different kinds of churches.  The next Sunday, I stopped by.

I could hear loud music blaring from outside the auditorium. I entered the room to see people of all ages and races standing, singing and dancing.  For a moment it made me smile.  My gaze move to the stage where, in confusion, I noticed strangely outfitted elderly women dancing.  My visual memory has never been good.  I couldn't exactly describe the uniform the women were wearing, but then, to be honest, I'm not sure I would have been able to describe it well even while gazing upon it.

In time, the pastor approached the podium to lead the church in a reader-response prayer.  It flowed like a typical liturgical prayer, except for the words.  In most liturgies, the church will pray for the leaders of the nation and the world, for their church, for family relations and the like.  This prayer had nothing of the sort.  The pastor prayed for a new car, and the church responded by praying specifically for a convertible.  He prayed for new land, and the church prayed for a thousand acres.  The prayer went on like for some time.

I don't remember the message of the sermon or even whether I stayed for it.  There was plenty of singing.  At one point during the service it seemed that almost everyone was approaching the front of the auditorium to practice fainting - something that is sometimes called being slain in the Spirit.  I remember approaching to see what this was all about.  To the surprise of those who'd gathered around to catch me, I didn't faint.

The service continued well after the scheduled time, and at a point I decided that I ought to leave to get lunch before heading out to my own service.  After all these years, I'm still not sure what to make of the religion that was preached at the church.  At the time, I would have called what I saw heresy.  I suppose I still would from a traditional Christian perspective.