Peace with God

Discovering peace with God is a struggle. What peace do you want? Peace from guilt? Peace from the rat race? Peace from inner turmoil? Peace from depression? Peace and quiet? Or simply a peaceful life? Then there is the whole God issue. Which god do you value? The monotheistic God, such as that followed by the Jews and Christians? The pantheistic god, as in god is everywhere and in everything thus everything is god? The polytheistic as in there are many, such as the Hindu? Or Lillith, the feminist god? See what we mean about struggle?

If you take the atheist route and say, "there is no god." That pretty well means you know everything possible there is to know, ending the dialogue. If that is you, I have a couple of questions about what my wife wants and would love to have just two Super bowl predictions. On the other hand, the agnostic route just means, "I don't know." That is cool. At least you are honest. The discovery of peace can actually begin simply. Think about this; why not set all the other issues aside and just say, "I am on a journey to discover, to discover both peace and god." A great deal of our conflict, struggle is because of the things we don't know or don't understand. If we assume there is a higher being or power out there somewhere, then we can also assume that being has some form of interest in other beings. Look at our (as in human) interest in "lower" forms of life, even ants and bacteria. If you were to set out on a life journey to discover this higher being, don't you think that sooner or later you would make that discovery -for both you and the higher being would be on the same path of discovery? At the very least you would grow to a higher understanding of meaning and purpose in life.

So, why not begin the journey? Why not declare, "God I want to know you. I am searching for you. Will you help me find you?" That does not solve all your issues, answer all you questions, but it does set you on the best path to do so. We have a friend from Russia who took this approach. He was raised atheist. He was in a neighborhood gang. He was transferred to a remote collective farm, living in a hut. He was alone and began to think, "There has to be something better." He asked the question that began the journey. God found him.

At Common Ground we do not want to oversimplify. Life is struggle. Life is pain, highness (Wesley in Princess Bride). Here is where we come out on the issue: We discovered a God of gods. We began a journey of discovery and found that the God of the Hebrews said, "If you seek him, he will let you find him." Further along in history, Jesus Christ said, "Call unto me and I will answer." That told us that a higher being was looking for us at the same time we were looking for him. We started the journey. Why don't you?

Engaging Emerging Cultures

Common Ground has made the choice, from the outset, to function as a community of believers that operates in cultural locations the traditional church neglects. This is not an indictment against the traditional church, for we respect the church in all forms, we respect our heritage, and we encourage freedom for each individual church to select a culture to engage. Our choice is to engage neglected emerging cultures, to cooperate with others who do the same, and to support others who do similar work. Currently, our own primary emerging culture target is people in their twenties.

If we were to go as missionaries to a third world country, we would take time to get acquainted with the culture, search for relevant redemption analogies, and begin to engage the culture. At Common Ground we consider ourselves missionaries to our culture and we follow such a process. We have minimized our "at church" time demands so we may pursue relationships in the culture. We encourage our people to actively participate in the culture on a search for dialogue and narratives that have redemption themes. We actively engage the culture, growing relationships of trust, listening to others, telling our story, adding to the meta-narrative that is the story of redemption.

The primary choice at this time is to discover methodology for engaging recent college graduates in anytime/anywhere groups for dialogue and activity. We have discovered this particular age group is underrepresented in traditional church life and we are exploring the reasons and mapping methods for supporting their spiritual journey. Often, these individuals have experienced religious life through a youth group or a campus ministry, but are not connected to the church. We view this as a failure of the church rather than a failure of the person. As we discover individuals who are relational catalysts, we offer support in the form of resources and mutual accountability. We gladly share our experiences and reap the benefit of their ideas and energy.

A secondary choice we have made is to discover ways to connect with those who live in apartment communities. A substantial portion of the twenty-something population lives in apartments. We are working first to make apartment communities a better place to live, then as we are able to engage the residents in a dialogue regarding their journey of life. If we find ways to support and encourage this journey, then we pursue that as ministry.

An additional choice we have made is to invest in college students as a means of reaching a population group that is under-represented in church life. We are networking with college students around the state to plant organic short-life span churches that reach students who would not attend a church in any of its current forms. We are supporting catalysts that lead a group of planters, we are connecting student leaders who would plant with mentors in their area, and we offer training for students and mentors through boot camps and engaging emerging cultures experience weekends.

Finally, we have made the choice to network with others who are engaging emergent cultures in creative and innovative ways. Some of our friends are "deep under-cover" and we provide support and accountability. Others are simply working to build relationships by what we call preparing the soil which means there is little emphasis on church life, structure, and methods. For these, we provide support and accountability as well, and help them maintain connections by translating their efforts in a manner that churched people could understand.

Our Mission

Common Ground expects all of our groups to be On Mission - to engage in some form of common decency on a regular basis. In keeping with the value of others, the groups are encouraged to select a task or project that builds long-term relationships. Common Ground also regularly engages in activities that build, enhance, and support the community in which we live. Common Ground enjoys many reciprocal relationships with other churches, mission organizations, and community agencies.

Our Neighborhood

San Antonio is our neighborhood, and we feel responsible for making it a better place to live. Since one of our values is others, we choose to invest our resources on people and relationships rather than buildings and equipment. We are grateful to our neighbors at Woodland Baptist for sharing their facility with us, which frees us to pursue our values.

One way we support our community is by working with our neighbors, staffing disaster relief teams. We have participated in mud-out teams following floods and with food service teams following a train accident. We have certified mass care providers and we remain on call for future events.

Common Ground has been active in helping to make apartment communities a better place to live since our inception. We work with a local management company to sponsor block party/cookouts in five communities, helping neighbors get acquainted. We have hosted anytime/anywhere groups in these communities as well. We also sponsor mission groups to work with children in apartment communities.

Common Ground is active in collegiate life, sponsoring outreach events and spiritual activities on campus and in campus housing. We recently helped to co-sponsor Connecting with God a 24/7 experiential prayer event the week before Easter, cooperating with all of the Christian groups on the UTSA Campus.

Common Ground is active in church planting and the emergent church. We have co-sponsored a Hispanic church plant on the near west side. We are supporting a new church plant in Lubbock, called The Journey. And, we participate in the emergent cohort in San Antonio.

Our World

If we were to only operate in our neighborhood, we would be neglecting part of our commission. Common Ground participates physically in missions efforts in Mexico, and financially through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We do border missions with a group of small churches out of the Dallas area and interior Mexico missions with Past the Edge Ministries. We highly recommend PTE for trip coordination and their online planner.

In addition, we like to discover causes that benefit world hunger, education, and economic relief. We support the One Campaign.

In Fellowship, Service, and Worship...

Our goal is to experience God together. It is understood that not everyone will experience God in exactly the same way at exactly the same time, but the intention is to create an atmosphere that will facilitate a corporate connection with God.

We were created by God in his own likeness with the ability to create. It glorifies God to worship him with our creativity ("The creation of the created glorifies the Creator").

We are relational people. Worship should be structured with the ability to adapt and change as our relationship with God changes and as we have the need to encounter him differently.

Last Saturday

Last Saturday is a participatory celebration of the creative arts that includes art, live readings, acoustic music, and interactive discussion between artist and audience. Local artists, writers, and musical talent are featured. As you might have guessed, Last Saturday takes place on the last Saturday of each month.

Sights

We find the visual arts stimulating. The release of an individual's personal vision, the subjective struggle, and the use of media all stimulate our minds and emotions. We find that we learn more about ourselves through gazing on another's creative work. We find the resulting dialogue stimulates our thoughts toward the Ultimate Creator. We often use the visual arts as a focal point during a worship experience as a means of removing interference or distraction. The Art Galley feature of Last Saturday allows new, unrecognized local talent a chance to display work that would not get the attention it deserves in a traditional setting.

Sounds

We enjoy a soundtrack of life that is not dictated by popular music and mega corporations. For this reason, we feature local, unsung talent in the music portion of Last Saturday. Passionate music helps us celebrate and reflect on life. Sometimes the goal is to wake up at a later date with a new song echoing in the brain, adding clarity, forcing an accurate perspective.

Sentences

We feel like there is an incredible volume of unrecognized talent hiding in normal people. In addition, we enjoy sharing our individual journey with each other. Many people keep journals, write for release, produce some quality work, but few get published. At Common Ground, we desire to be a forum for creativity; both stimulation to creativity, and release of creativity. A significant part of Last Saturday is the readings segment in which we feature local talent, both published and unpublished.

To Participate

Artists are encouraged to offer their work for sale. To inquire about participating in Last Saturday as an artist, email Barry at this website.