Detroit Villages: What is Christian Community (in your own words)?

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann: A Christian community is a group of people who commit intentionally to one another and the broader community who are struggling together with the questions of discipleship in their current context. As they say, reading the Gospel in one hand and the newspaper in the other. We take the Gospel and ask the questions for our own lives and our current historical moment.

DV: Why is community important?

L W-K: Community makes Gospel easier. Community offers us a group of people who are holding us accountable. Community makes the touch work more joyful. Community is an act of resistance to a culture of individualism and competition and capitalism. Community is a gift to each individual who are held within it and also a gift to the larger surrounding community who are touched by it.

DV: Do you live in "community"?

L W-K: yes.

If you don't live in some form of community, what is your living situation?

Do you live in Detroit (or Hamtramck or highland Park)? If so, did you grow up there or relocate?

L W-K: I do live in Detroit. I was born and raised in Detroit and I love it and plan to commit to this city long term.

Detroit is an incredible city. I do not want to sugarcoat the reality of the suffering and injustice that is everywhere in the city of Detroit. But I also want to make clear that Detroit is a place where hope is contagious. Detroit is a place where for decades people have taken the basic act of survival and turned those actions into creative signs of movement and resistance. Detroit is a city where you know and feel the urban reality and at the same time can keep your hands in the dirt being nurtured by the soil and the earth and gifted with its fruit. Detroit is a place of real people living real lives. Detroit has a history and a story. I am so grateful to be living in Detroit. Living in Detroit is such a gift. The teachers and community that exists here is a beautiful thing.

DV: If you're in the city, what type of connection to you have with your neighbors?

L W-K: Our community is on a block in southwest Detroit that for several decades has been the home of intentional communities doing peace activism in the city. We are grateful to be on this block and begin the movement of a new generation in this work. We also have a long way to go in being good neighbors. We cannot ignore the reality of what it means to be an all white community moving in to Detroit. Those questions of privilege are important and crucial.

DV: Do you think this is just a fad (moving to the city to live in community)?

L W-K: There are certainly ways that young people have always been briefly interested in the urban experience. But I hope this is not a fad. It is a wonderful, sustainable, and life giving way of life that is crucial in our own understanding of community, justice, and indeed Christianity.

DV: What steps should we take in order to avoid this from becoming a passing fad?

L W-K: We need to be patient and gentle with one another knowing that community is never easy. We need to remain open to the ways that we are wrong or arrogant in our choices. We need to always be willing to learn. We need to always be filled with gratitude and joy. We need to remain committed to the Gospel, to justice, and to one another.