At the Margins

Over the next few months Culpeper House will be losing some of the members of our community…  Josh and Sarah are returning to Florida to be with their families, Ryan is planning to move into an apartment with his brother, and Sarita will be leaving for Uganda.

Times of transition provide excellent opportunities to refocus.  Over the coming weeks we will be focusing on the vision that God has put on our hearts as a community and how to best structure ourselves moving forward.  This will help us better transition new people into Culpeper House as we move forward.

If you or someone you know is interested in exploring the possibility of being a part of Culpeper House, please e-mail us at info@culpeperhouse.org.

It’s an exciting time, but also a sad time as we will very much miss those who are leaving.

There are tons of pictures from my recent trip to El Salvador posted in Facebook.  The good news is that anyone can see them at http://www.mattpritchard.com/pictures/facebook

Tomorrow I will be starting my first day disciplemaking (in a formal capacity) at Fairlington Presbyterian Church.

As everyone who knows me responds, “you’re going to work for a church?!?!?!” In fact, the only reason I started blogging about the Church and my faith was that I thought I’d never work for a church.  God has a funny way of busting out our visions of the future for His.

My thinking on church has not really changed. The Senior Pastor is a good friend and neighbor. She has been working hard to steer those in her care towards being the Church and I will be part of that change. I’ve been invited because of relationships and my giftings and not my institutional church qualifications. As anyone who spends any time with me quickly discovers, I am both passionate about helping people become disciples of Christ–seeking after him with reckless abandon and obeying the Holy Spirit–and building authentic Christian community (a.k.a. the Church).

God will continue to be providing my income, just through a church now and not the Rural Trust, and as such, I will continue to be ultimately responsible to Him.

I’m certainly more than a bit trepidatious, but at the same time, so excited!

Welcome to the format for At the Margins and MattPritchard.com.

Let me know what you think…

From the Simple Way’s website:

This morning, a 7-alarm fire consumed an abandoned warehouse in our Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia. The Simple Way Community Center at 3200 Potter Street was destroyed as well as at least eight of our neighbors’ homes. Over 100 people were evacuated from their homes, and 400 families are currently without power. Despite this developing tragedy, we are incredibly thankful to share that all of our community members and every one of our neighbors is safely out of harm’s way.

Please be in prayer for the people of Potter Street who have been affected by this tragedy and consider donating to help with the loss.

Learn more at http://www.thesimpleway.org/

So, it’s been way too long since I’ve posted. I’m still not going to post anything substantial tonight, but I wanted to let everyone know about a couple of new websites launched today.

My community, now named the Culpeper House, has a website at http://www.culpeperhouse.org.

Also, I have just put together a list of DC Area new monastic/intentional Christian communities, http://www.dc.newmonastics.org. I’m sure I’ve missed places, so if anyone knows of more, let me know.

I’ve been contemplating starting a blog for a few months now. Figured I might as well start and what better time than now. I’ll begin doing a few posts and try to get the swing of things before I let everyone know.