The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together

Publisher Marketing: Everyday life is often times not experienced as very relational anymore. The church has been co-opted by services and meetings detached from a relational expression within a particular place or parish in everyday life. We need to create the context to reimagine the body of Christ in everyday life as embodied through its proximity and shared life together. Without the value of inhabiting and listening to the place where we live, we will have very little expression of faith together in everyday life. There needs to be an embodied expression for our ecclesiology to make sense. If we do not have a local expression together, we will create a duality between our spirituality and our everyday lives in the ordinary. The Communal Imagination will draw out a new way of being for ourselves into this transition of embodied expression by stressing the importance of proximity and shared life within a particular neighborhood where we live, work and play. We need to embody practices as a way of life that are based on a spirituality of love, grace, humility and simplicity within the place where we share life together. This is how we will be able to get along and function in a healthy way over time that does not do damage to the cultural context we are in as we build on the particulars of our relationships together. Contributor Bio:  Sparks, Paul Paul Sparks is a Parish Organizer and Social Entrepreneur. His place-based expertise and trusted friendship in neighborhoods across North America make him an indispensable consultant to faith communities, academic institutions, and community organizations. Paul speaks for strong resilient relationships within the parish, and brave collaborative links across places. Paul is the co-founder of Local Life: Coalition for Livable Communities, the Parish Collective: Rooted and Linked for Parish Renewal, and Urban Landscaping: Rapid Placeshaking Collaborations. He is also an instructor for the Leadership in the New Parish at the Seattle School of Psychology and Theology and is the co-founder of the Inhabit Conference. Paul lives in an urban neighborhood at the heart of Downtown Tacoma, Washington with his co-conspiring wife Elizabeth. They pastor a growing faith community comprised of friends, artists and entrepreneurs seeking a common life together with their neighbors.