Mark Scandrette

The first two months of 2007 have been an incredibly productive and fruitful season for all of us working with ReIMAGINE. We’ve had the opportunity to interact with over 1,000 people through speaking engagements, training events and one-on-one appointments. In a small way we hope that our work imitates the pattern of Jesus and his earliest disciples. There was a broad continuum to their contact and impact with people– from large crowds in the daytime to intimate conversations at midnight. Jesus traveled and communicated his message in many different places. His disciples also made itenerant visits to various towns and villages. As Jesus traveled certain people responded strongly to his message and he spent time explaining further and training these disciples. Jesus also took the time to relate one-on-one when people had deeper questions or needs.

Over the past two months our team has traveled extensively throughout Northern California teaching and speaking to groups (prespectives courses, training classes in churches, group retreats and public discussions). We also facilitated several local workshops and events, (previously named the Jesus Dojo and now called Learning Labs). Our travels and networking have helped bring energy to our local SEVEN community. It has been exciting to meet new people every week visiting our SEVEN gathering on Sunday nights. We are literally busting at the seams, averaging 30 people a week, and are searching diligently for a larger meeting space. Yet for all of us, the most rewarding part of our work is the time that we get to spend with individuals over a meal or coffee, hearing life stories, and helping guide people in their next steps through spiritual friendship, mentoring and service.

I’ve had the privledge this month to begin meeting with Jason who has recently begun seeking the way of Jesus. Six years ago no one would have expected Jason to be interested in Jesus as he traveled to our neighborhood to buy a daily dose of heroin. During a process of drug recovery Jason slowly began noticing that many of the people surrounding him were Christians– not the kind he anticipated from the steorotypes, but people who lived with a great deal of integrity and compassion. Jason started asking questions and out of curiousity began reading the scriptures. Gradually he came to see himself as a disciple of Jesus and is eager to discover how to rethink or reimagine his life to pursue the greater wholeness we are invited into. Together we’ve been exploring what it might mean for him to reimagine specific dimensions of his life: his time, money, relationships, mental space, goals and vocation. Its been fun for me to see Jason making new choices that are opening up new possibilities.

CREATIVITY is one of the seven vows we have taken as a community based on the example and teaching of Jesus. Jesus communicated his message using poetry, stories and provocative performance art. When Jesus announced, “The kingdom of God is at hand” he invited us to repent, reimagine or rethink our thinking about life. Awakening and renewing the imagination is an essential step toward returning to the Maker’s vision for our lives. And because we were made in the image of a Creator, exercising freedom and creativity is an important response to the sacrifice of Jesus. The apostle Paul described the fruitfulness we were made for when he wrote: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10).

Although some people may fear the concept of imagination, (as though it is synonomous with myth or fantasy), as a culture I believe we suffer, not from too much imagination, but a lack of redemptive imagination. In our work with ReIMAGINE we try to help people awaken their imaginations for what it might mean for them to live more fully in God’s dream for our lives. We think this is one of the essential goals of reading scripture and doing theology– learning to connect our individual stories with the larger story revealed through scripture and in history. So, if you ever visit our community in San Francisco, you will meet people using the arts to connect their story to God’s story through painting, poetry, song-writing and other creative endeavors. Not all of us are professional artists, but we encourage each other to find ways to explore and express the story of God and humanity in artful ways. We hope that through the freedom and creativity found in person of Jesus we can be apart of awakening the imagination of our society to “a new way of life.”