All Church Retreat

The Church of the Sojourners is a live-together church community, thirty-some disciples of Jesus widely ranging in age, temperament, history, tradition, culture, and taste in music. Here in commune-friendly, alternative lifestyle San Francisco, we find that we need to emphasize the “church” aspect of Sojourners. We worship, we have prayer meetings and potlucks. The Bible functions as our charter document, helping us interpret our experience, and mentoring us into the adventure of “church.” Even though we meet in our largest living room rather than in a building with steeple and pews, our purpose is to be a real church.We have found that a good way to live out our desire to be church is by living communally (and this is the part we emphasize with some of our Christian friends). In order to be an intact body of Christ, in order to love one another as Christ loved us (let alone know each other well enough to begin doing that), we find that our lives need to overlap big time. So we share space. Thirty-five of us live in four large houses. And we share money and resources. Ask one of us a question like, “Who owns that car?” and you’ll most likely get a puzzled look and a shrug, because most of us don’t even know. And we share time. So we do things like take vacations together, and eat meals together five nights a week.Our interest in community is not for the sake of communal living, but because we believe that at the center of the Gospel is an invitation for people to share life in Christ together. Living like this does not guarantee a continuous experience of miraculous unity and love with Jesus and one another, but while we sojourn on the Way, enjoying the company of each other and the Spirit, we are graced with many evidences that our longed-for kingdom home is truly at hand.

We take “sharing life together” quite literally.

Most of us live together in four buildings, all of which are within a ten-minute walk of each other. Households—who we live and eat with—are our basic organizational unit. Real faith and love (including opportunities to grow in patience and forgiveness, as well as providing others with equal opportunities) are nurtured and practiced with the people we live with. Our households are real households in that they include people of all ages, but they are not limited to families. We are stretched to experience family as God’s family.

Who is our neighbor?

We live in San Francisco’s Mission District, a neighborhood known for its color, cultural richness, and history of receiving immigrants. For many years it has been a predominantly Latino neighborhood. It has always been a mixture of poor and rich, families and single people, outsiders and trendsetters. We originally moved here with a desire to serve the Salvadoran refugee community who had settled here after fleeing the violence of civil war. In the almost twenty years we have been here we’ve watched the old neighborhood gradually become more and more upscale until now it is considered such a desirable place to live that it is hard to find an apartment for rent at any price. Nevertheless, a lot of the old neighbors are left, thanks to San Francisco’s tenants’ rights laws. Our streets are inhabited by an odd combination of junked-out Toyotas and new Jaguars, and a single block can be home to an astounding range of income levels and ethnic and educational backgrounds. We have found ourselves in some interesting conversations as we seek to love our various neighbors, homeowning and homeless, desperate and decadent, friendly and wary, loud and humble.