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In a coffee shop in Northside sits a man whose arms and legs are a rainbow of tattoos. Among Tawd Bell’s piercings are large circular pieces stretching his lower ear lobes and three evenly spaced studs in his lower lip. Both he and his 2-year-old daughter Nora, playing with a wet straw wrapper, sport chain wallets.
Bell’s appearance is not deceiving; there is something different about him. He is a radical Christian.
Two families and two singles related only through their religious beliefs share a battered brick house with banana yellow trim on a side street in Northside. This is the Mustard Seed House Intentional Community, a long and official sounding name for a house full of Christians.
‘The only thing to do’
“Community in the broad sense is something that you have to create, something that you have to be very aggressive about,” Bell says. “So for us, this is how we felt God was calling us to live that out.”
Bell, his wife and their two daughters are one of the families living in this intentional community.
The house has both permanent and temporary tenants. The nine members there now range in age from 1 to the mid-30s.
On Sunday the housemates pile into a car and head off to worship, but not at a church. They are part of a growing House Church movement, in which groups of three or more meet in homes to worship without the trappings of an organized service.
House churches have been popping up across the United States as Christians look for a hands-on alternative to organized religion. The house church movement strives to de-program the church and strip it back down to its base elements.
“The American church, because of its market-driven concepts and its corporate mentality, has basically been co-opted by corporate America,” Bell says.
Every church is a business as well as a place to worship. Offerings and collections pay for rent and salaries. Elaborate recruitment campaigns result in hip logos and catchy slogans to bring in new members.
“The model right now is to become the big mega-church where you have thousands of people and a really organized structure,” says Bell’s housemate, Jeremy Drake. “We just found that unless you’re really gung-ho and try to get involved, you’ll get overlooked.”
A house church is a better way to implement the style of living taught by Christianity, according to Bell.
“We’ve really lost our first task, which is to make disciples and the only way you can do that is through intimate relations with one another and sharing your life through some sort of faith community,” he says. “It’s just about support. Relationships. It’s not really about organizations. It’s cool because it’s very inter-denominational, nondenominational, anti-denominational.”
An intentional community provides a place for Christians to do more than worship together on Sundays. Members worship on a daily basis by living together and pooling their income.
“The way that I read Scripture, it seems like this is the only thing to do,” Drake says.
Drake cites New Testament passages about the formation of the early church. After Jesus’ ascension, his followers lived in each other’s homes and shared possessions.
“I think this is a really great model, especially for our generation,” Drake says.
“For us it’s trying to decentralize leadership and activity making the church more fluid, more flexible,” Bell says.
Drake and Bell, both in their 20s, have been Christians all their lives, but they are constantly challenging their beliefs. They’re not afraid to look one way and act another.
Bell knows his appearance raises questions. It is fellow Christians who seem to have the biggest problem with his self-decoration. But being different is OK, he says.
“I have lots of other differences with many Christians, too,” Bell says.
Bell says he has tattoos because he appreciates them as an art form. He also recognizes tattoos’ historical significance as tribal custom and as a form of Christian rebellion during the Crusades.
“Christ didn’t come here to make us homogenous, he wanted to redeem us for God’s use and God’s purposes,” Bell says.
Society has a need for what house churches have to offer, according to Bell. A house church gives members an opportunity to be full-time, hands-on Christians — but with a hands-off attitude.
Worship styles differ from house to house, fitting the participants’ needs and preferences. No house church accurately represents the movement, and that’s the way they want it.
With no leadership structure to spread information, the movement relies on word of mouth and the Internet for networking. Web sites are a primary way for people to find house churches. The Mustard Seed’s site (www.vineyardcentral.com/02gather/hc_mustardseed.html) includes directions and a description of its Sunday meetings.
Christian anarchists
This intentional community began by accident. In 1998 Vineyard Central, a Christian church in Norwood, met at a community center. The building was abruptly condemned, leaving it with 48 hours to vacate.
“We panicked and we split into five regional groups and started meeting at people’s home,” Drake says. “The pastor would travel around and make sure everybody was on the same page.”
Vineyard Central had already been in transition away from the local church concept. The congregation eventually purchased an abandoned Catholic church, but didn’t resuscitate its Sunday morning service. Instead a Saturday All-Group service began for all the members of the house churches.
The rectory housed pastors’ families while the convent was opened to members of the church. A few businesses were started so members could spend more time together.
“Through all of that we were living on-site and looked around and saw a bunch of people who were either really poor or getting by pretty well, and we decided we should pool our money, just take care of each other,” Drake says.
One year later, that vision became a reality. Their first intentional community, Community House, formed as a separate but connected entity of Vineyard Central. In order to legalize their common purse, participants applied for non-profit status, the same status a monastic society has.
Community House filled up quickly. Bell and others decided it was time to branch off into a new house in a new neighborhood. They moved into the Mustard Seed house on the first day of the new millennium.
“We’ve been living in Northside for a year and 10 months now,” Bell says. “It’s a beautiful place to be, and it is one of the more racially integrated neighborhoods.”
Part of what makes the intentional community work is a commitment to the house.
“We take vows together,” Bell says. “Community. Simplicity. Celebration. Sabbath. Work. Justice. Study. Hospitality. Worship.”
“Service,” Drake adds, after checking his palm pilot.
“We’re trying to find a balance between a monastic life that also allows freedom to live in urban areas where you can have time to spend with neighbors and just serve and love people where opportunities present themselves,” Bell says.
A commitment to the larger community is fundamental, too. Mustard Seed’s emphasis on positively impacting their neighborhood manifests itself in small ways.
“We just want to be the best damn neighbors we can be,” Bell says.
The Mustard Seed has opened its doors to people in need of a place to stay or just a place to clear their head. They pick up litter. They participate in food distribution services.
With a house full of five adults, it’s impossible to pin down their politics. Bell and Drake do not vote.
“Most of us, I think, would consider ourselves Christian anarchists, where we believe our spirituality is our politics,” Bell says. “We don’t participate in standard elections. As was proven in our presidential election, I believe very strongly that the system is broken and it cannot be fixed, so it feels kind of silly to participate. I think there are better ways of changing society as a whole through more grassroots ideas.”
In a sense, the household’s lifestyle and interaction with neighbors is a kind of substitute for politics.
“It’s all about just being a pedestrian, getting to know our neighbors and figuring out what they need, helping them,” Bell says. “In my thinking that’s a very political activity.”
To each other, the housemates are family. They take turns with morning devotionals.
“One member of the household leads each morning,” Bell says. “Right now I’m reading a short story by Leo Tolstoy. Someone else is reading though Psalms.”
Each night the household eats an evening meal together. Every adult takes turns cooking.
“On and off we have a sporadic thing like music night, but we try not to schedule too much community activity, try to keep it organic,” Bell says. “In the Third World countries, even in Europe and in other places, they have been churching like this for decades now. In Vietnam, Korea, India, churching in the home is the primary way that people live out their Christianity. America is just catching up.” ©
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2001.
