Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

l room to gather for study or prayer, but the larger rooms are reserved for ‘hanging out’. Without agenda, but with great intentionality on the part of committed members, a safe environment is created for those who would not consider attending a worship service or formal church activity. Conversations are started, needs discovered, false understandings unmasked. Discussions can become intense, or can remain on a safe level with the most nervous. The church maintains two Facebook pages — the Scum Community page offers information and events; the Scum Baggage Claim is specifically for posting needs with which the community might be able to help. The posts may be as simple as “Help me move a desk” to “I am being evicted tomorrow and need a place to stay till the next paycheck.” All requests, if politely made, are allowed (even if it is unlikely they can be met), and no judgment is made by the administrators of the person’s worthiness to receive help. In an age of tweets and tolerance, young adults need to see examples of disciplined dialogue between those who disagree on significant social issues. Occasionally, in the guise of ‘just expressing myself, a person will instigate arguments, make deriding comments and accusations, cause hurt, and shut down conversations in the process. Not long after the presidential elections, as a fellow my age and I cleaned up after a Sunday evening dinner at Scum, he casually asked for whom I had voted. It turns out we had voted 32 Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 46. Bonhoeffer's well-known admonition comes to mind also: ‘He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial’. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (London: SCM Press, 1954), pp. 15- 16. 33 Catherine T. Nerney and Hal Taussig, Re-Imagining Life Together in America: A New Gospel of Community (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2002), p. 230. Blomberg, Contentment 51 for different candidates. I was aware that activity around us halted and people waited to hear how this conversation would ‘go down’. It was an excellent, unscheduled opportunity to model ‘convicted civility’ for an audience often unsure how to handle criticism, and wary of being labelled ‘judgmental ’. 34 The Discipline of Choosing A stable identity and practised contentment resists the claim that one must assiduously avoid closing doors on options and consistently acquire more and newer things. One task of practising contentment is to become genuinely free by acquiring the virtue of choosing and committing, because ‘freedom is not having all options open, but of being so formed that many options are not real alternatives ’. 35 In an age of increasing relativism, exploration of options can continue without resolution (recall Melanie, who couldn’t settle on a Saturday