Synopsis
Everyday life is often times not experienced as very relational anymore. The church has been co-opted by services and meetings detached from a relational expression within a particular place or parish in everyday life. We need to create the context to reimagine the body of Christ in everyday life as embodied through its proximity and shared life together. Without the value of inhabiting and listening to the place where we live, we will have very little expression of faith together in everyday life. There needs to be an embodied expression for our ecclesiology to make sense. If we do not have a local expression together, we will create a duality between our spirituality and our everyday lives in the ordinary. The Communal Imagination will draw out a new way of being for ourselves into this transition of embodied expression by stressing the importance of proximity and shared life within a particular neighborhood where we live, work and play. We need to embody practices as a way of life that are based on a spirituality of love, grace, humility and simplicity within the place where we share life together. This is how we will be able to get along and function in a healthy way over time that does not do damage to the cultural context we are in as we build on the particulars of our relationships together.
From the Back Cover
"Inside everyone there is a longing for community, to love and be loved. We are made in the image of a communal God. But in our hyper-mobile,individualistic, cluttered world... community is an endangered thing. And community is like working out - it takes work, sweat, discipline... without that our muscles atrophy. Everybody wants to be fit, but not too many people want to do the work to get there. Mark's book is sort of a workout manual, helping you rediscover your communal muscles and start building them up slowly. It is an invitation to live deep in a shallow world." Shane Claiborne, author and activist
"Mark Votava's book is like a smooth stone in a churning stream. When all around us seems to be prone to speed, consumption, movement and success, The Communal Imagination is a sure and unwavering call to simplicity, presence, attentiveness and collaboration. Read it slowly. It calls us to nothing less than a new way to be human." Michael Frost, author of Incarnate and The Road to Missional
"Mark Votava wrestles with 'the tension between the real and the possible' in his Tacoma neighborhood, in community relationships and inside himself. His humble witness invites us to consider and practice simplicity, love, growth, and gratitude. This profoundly honest text is chock full of ideas born of experience. A battle with depression, an intentional choice to leave employment as a school teacher and instead take jobs as a janitor and a dishwasher and the struggle to overcome anger and bitterness give him the authority to bring relevant recommendations. Votava's wise words on forgiveness, reconciliation and letting go of control have the ring of one who knows. This book covers essential territory for building healthy communities of Jesus for the long haul." Kelly Bean, Executive Director, African Road, co-planter Urban Abbey, co-founder Convergence, author of How to be a Christian Without Going to Church: The Unofficial Guide to Alternative Forms of Christian Community
"Words like simplicity, vulnerability and humility are hard to find and harder to live in today's individualistic, high speed pursuit of success and control. Nonetheless, Mark Votava not only writes about them but intentionally and authentically embodies them in his everyday life in the parish. With warmth, honesty and a wonderful integration of Scripture reflections and true stories, Mark presents components of a communal imagination such as love, forgiveness and gratitude that challenge our current modes of being and invite us to embrace a way of life together that embodies the shalom of God's Kingdom. This book is not just for reading, it's for doing!" Karen Wilk, Forge Canada National Team and Neighborhood Mission Catalyzer, author of Don't Invite Them To Church: Moving From a Come and See to a Go And Be Church
"Mark refreshingly awakens his readers to the life-giving significance of the everyday ordinariness of community life together. He unfolds the beauty of shared life lived intentionally in close proximity and regular everyday encounters. Mark's honesty is very encouraging as he invites and at the same time challenges readers to take courage in order to know the joys of belonging. His book draws readers into a counter-cultural lifestyle of vulnerability and interdependence where we can experience Scriptural reality of salvation by entering the same community life they were written for, from and within. Most beautifully pointed out here, is how Mark unpacks Jesus' teaching of everyday forgiveness - challenging, inviting and coaxing us to know the freedom it gives through the reality of our own experiences." Eileen Baura Suico, co-founder, pastor and director of With, contributing writer to The Gospel After Christendom: New Voices, New Cultures, New Expressions
"Community not individualism, shared life in proximity together - these are the concepts that grabbed my imagination as I read Mark Votava's book The Communal Imagination. Weaving his personal story with the wisdom he has gained from rooting himself in a community that has become home, workplace and worship space, Mark engages us in a journey of discovery and revelation. His practice-based experiences of sacredness in the ordinary and how it opens us up to being the body of Christ is both compelling and refreshing. Think global, act local gains new meaning through this book." Christine Sine, Executive Director, Mustard Seed Associates, author of Godspace and Return to our Senses
"Embracing community is not simply a strong Christian value in which we all just try to get along, but rather is about becoming, together, the presence of Christ to one another and the world. Mark Votava invites us into that possibility in this book, in parts equally practical, personal and prophetic. It is high time for us to rediscover The Communal Imagination." Jamie Arpin-Ricci, author of The Cost of Community
"Some writers are widely read but live thinly; others read little but live deeply. In page after page of The Communal Imagination, my friend Mark Votava evidences the rare gift of being one who reads widely and lives deeply. Mark's careful but tenacious wisdom - forged in adventures of the glorious mundane of neighborhood gospel life - kindles me with hope and gratitude. May these pages likewise gift your community with eyes to see together what God may be up to." Brandon Rhodes, D.Min., author of Blip: Faithful Presence Amid the Making and Unmaking of the Petrol-Driven Church, Field Guide for the Parish Collective, owner Rolling Oasis Grocers
"Rooted in intellect and experience, this book is a charge for the Church to reorient its identity from an autonomous entity to an interconnected organism. Acknowledging the high cost of such a reorientation, Mark offers a vision and set of practices that might just allow us to experience life and faith as it was meant to be lived." Jon Huckins, neighborhood practitioner, author of Thin Places
"Many have written on church as local presence, few have explored its depths with such first person intensity as Mark Votava. In The Communal Imagination Votava propelled me into his personal journey in a way that grew my capacity to be 'with' people I did not think possible. With wisdom and grace, the book challenged my life. It gave me a 'practice-based theology' for taking the gospel local." David Fitch, author of Prodigal Christianity, The Great Giveaway and The End of Evangelicalism?
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