What's the most challenging aspect of living in a shared community home?

Oh boy, there's lots of challenges! In some way, community is just a choice to live deeper than the dream of independence, which so often leads to loneliness. It's a chance to laugh harder, but it also means you also cry harder because you feel what hurts each other deeper. But the hurt is triumphed by the sense of love and companionship that you have.

What would you envisage happening if every Christian lived in community as you do?

We would see the kingdom of God coming, the end of poverty, the end of aggression and violence in our neighbourhoods and across the world. Dorothy Day (the Catholic journalist and social activist) said if every neighbourhood had a hospitality house and every household a room for the stranger then we would end poverty. What's exciting about what we see at The Simple Way is that people are not just serving in social service agencies that manage poverty, but they are connecting with the poor in a way that ends poverty. They are bringing folks into their home, figuring out how people can go to school and find waged jobs.

At the beginning of your book you talk about how your first experiences of church were dominated by preachers calling you to 'lay down your life', but you were never told what to pick up instead. Is your reaction to this still central to your current spirituality?

Without a doubt. I saw too many people bored with Christianity and they associated that with Jesus. That's one of the great tragedies with the sort of Christianity we have become accustomed to - people have narrowed it down to a doctrine and a belief system. That's not very invigorating or compelling, even if it is true. So I have surrounded myself with people who have challenged me to see how much there is to pick up.

Tony Campolo always says that being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and doing something daring with your life. I like that because that's what so many have done throughout history - taken up beautiful vocations not just for the sake of adventure but because the Gospel is a call to live in beautiful ways. When you surround yourself with other people that are risking their lives and loving deeply, it rubs off on you.

Could people in developing nations use your model of community living?

In some ways it is even more natural in poor countries - the people there often already have a deep sense of community and interdependence - in the sense of being a village, of each person using their gifts, of not compartmentalising your life in a nine-to-five routine that sucks the life out of you. A lot of these things are so counter-cultural in the West.

It seems like you have quite a pessimistic view of contemporary Western culture. To what extent should we celebrate the hand that we've been dealt?

I am very sceptical about the Western life and this package that we have been sold as the American dream. The people I know who have bought into it have only found it to be isolating and it does not satisfy our deepest spiritual hungers. We (the UK and US) have ended up the wealthiest, most medicated and depressed countries in the world - which should be indicative for us.

But there is always something to celebrate about God's gifts to us and to the world. One of the best ways to celebrate the best things in life is to give them away and to share them - there is something more fulfilling about sharing God's blessings than keeping them. As we give our lives on behalf of others it brings us to life as well. It's not just about how much the poor need us, but how much we really need each other. Isaiah 58 says when we spend ourselves on behalf of the poor, our healing comes - I love that. We don't heal from spiritual poverty in a vacuum - we heal through living our lives for something bigger than ourselves.

Was there a particular moment when you came to that realisation?

Over and over I talk to people whose dreams have died - the routine of life has compromised what they feel God's original dreams for them were. It's such a hard thing to see that. We squeeze out of life the very place that Jesus lived - which was in interruptions and surprises and people tugging on His shirt and telling Him that they messed up. We have lives where we go to work, come home, watch TV, go work out… and there's no space for the Spirit to move. What we do here is free ourselves of the clutter - by getting rid of the TV, by biking and by answering the door when neighbours come.

Your community obviously has a strong affinity with traditional monastic living.

Early on we were a little pretentious. We thought we were doing all this for the first time - and then we looked around and we saw that this is something that the Spirit has done over and over throughout history. Every few hundred years there is an identity crisis in the Church… and so there are groups of people who are cultural refugees - who pull out and try to re-think their lives as followers of Christ. For us St Francis has been someone we really resonate with - we started in an abandoned cathedral and mystically we have felt that call to repair the Church that is in ruins.

Some people might level at you the criticism that you have an affinity with a communist political ethic. To what extent would you refute that claim?

I say in my book (The Irresistible Revolution) that if we really discovered Christ's call to love our neighbours as ourselves then capitalism as we have it now would be impossible and communism would not be necessary. We are not creating a system but we are creating a relationship with people in poverty.

Redistribution is only meaningful as much as it is rooted in love and relationships. It is not a prescription for community but a just description of what happens when we live our lives alongside people who are hurting. If we really have genuine friendships with the poor then redistribution is inevitable - we see that in the early Church. They ended poverty in the early Church and we believe that we can do that again.

Tell me about the fire - how have your local community dealt with the trauma?

It was awful in many ways. There was a real feeling in the neighbourhood that this didn't have to happen - it wouldn't have happened in other neighbourhoods. But there is also the real, beautiful hope of people pulling together. The Red Cross said that they didn't have many people staying in the local shelter on the night of the fire because so many people in the neighbourhood had opened up their homes to each other.

What does your practical response to the situation look like now?

We have a coalition of neighbours affected by the fire and we have raised tens of thousands of dollars from around the world in order to rebuild homes - we've just begun work on two houses. We are excited to see homes restored and people moving back in.

Do you see the fire as persecution for what you're doing for Jesus?

The fire started in the warehouse - it wasn't like our building was set on fire. But there is a sense that when you live among the poor and marginalised you enter into suffering - or at least solidarity - with them. You become vulnerable to things like this, things that you would never need to worry about in other neighbourhoods.

What has been amazing about this situation is that it puts us on very equal ground with our neighbours. In our meetings we're no longer the heads of a non-profit organisation - our neighbours are bringing us clothes and telling us they want to help us rebuild. There is a real sense of bearing each others' burdens. It's what incarnational love should look like.

In your book you quote Bonhoeffer: 'The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community but the person who loves those around them will create community.' Is this the simple recipe for success that churches should follow?

For sure. We can see it in congregations that have a seven point, five-year programme for church growth - but then people in the congregation just rip each other apart. The same can be true in social justice circles - people can have a great vision for changing the world but be pretty hard to live with. In one community I went to, they had T-shirts that said 'Everybody wants a revolution but nobody wants to do the dishes'. That's the challenge - to live out the revolution every day in not just the great things but in doing the small things that we do with a lot of love.

My friend Brooke says that the most radical thing that we do is love each other again and again, and choose to do that every day.

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This article first appeared in the Autumn 2007 issue of Faithworks magazine, copyright CCP Ltd 2007, reproduced with permission. www.faithworksmagazine.info

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