Today in the WMF Omaha office the Community Care Center (Amanda, Hilary, Phileena and Silas) is having a meeting downstairs. Marcia is clacking away on her keyboard, sometimes talking to herself out loud. Jara is in the next room playing “Don’t Stop Believing” on repeat as she works on design. Michelle and Cesia are working on some accounting, giggling here and there. Liz is shouting few-word answers into the phone to the insurance company’s automated system (“Yes!” “I don’t know!” “No!”). And Chris is singing my name because I just cropped a PDF for him.
This is how our Omaha community functions: Sometimes we each work on our own project, in our own area of expertise, in the ways we work best; other times, we have communal projects that involve a lot of collaboration and teamwork. When we are working individually, it helps to still feel that we’re a team — that I’m doing my part the best I can, trusting that Liz is doing the best she can, believing that we are working toward the same end. For us, that means that we’re working together in the calling to serve Jesus among those who are vulnerable and to be a prophetic voice to the church as we share our friends’ stories.
Henri Nouwen writes in Reaching Out:
We discover each other by following the same vocation and by supporting each other in the same search. Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention. (120)
That’s about the best description of what I hope for the WMF community to be (each individual community, and then together as one big community — and this includes you!) — companions who are following the voice of God in vocation and even in knowing each other.