Koinonia’s Last Gathering

For nearly five years now I have had the honor of serving Koinonia Church in Second Life with colleagues and friends most dear.  We have a rich history and have over the years truly led a life online that reflects the meaning of our namesake.  We have built together a community through intimate participation and radical hospitality.  But as Lewis Caroll says as none other can…

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

In this season of birth and hope, in this beginning of the Christian calendar we at Koinonia are preparing to move beyond our digital walls and out into the cyber landscape as itinerant preachers, or as our Methodists sisters say, circuit riders.

When I served as the online organizer for The Beatitudes Society we named my position as the Circuit Rider and no title has ever felt such a good fit as did the one that presumed a constant motion moving among the highways and hedges of online and on-the-ground community.   In an age where property bound churches are both a blessing and a bane, we have found even our pixels are more structure than we are able to maintain.  I now more fully understand my call as one of roaming the virtual and real landscape as a humble emissary of Love and Grace beyond our comprehension.

I have cherished every moment of life with Koinonia Church and this work we have been about has shaped so much of my life and ministry.  I have come to understand how small our comprehension of the ways in which the Spirit can and does move and an appreciation for the depth of relationships formed and nurtured in online spaces.

Thank you John, Catherine, Ian, Kathy, Jeanne, Mark, Neal, Sequoia, Charlene, Erixx, Skylark, all of  my professors at Candler who encouraged this odd and wondrous calling to online ministry and everyone who has been a part of this journey – which continues on unfettered by the bounds of even a virtual building.

I want to invite everyone to visit us one last time, this Saturday on Christmas Eve, 2011 for a final community worship as we welcome the Light of the World, the Child born into poverty who lived and died as Liberator for us all. We will gather at noon Pacific time and, as my local pastor says, everyone, everyone, everyone is welcome.