Common Disciplines, The

INTRODUCTION

V. THE COMMON DISCIPLINES

88. The spirit movement is its discipline. No revolution was ever accomplished without discipline. In all social life men act out of some discipline, whether consciously or unconsciously. The discipline of the spirit movement is first of all intentionally constructed. It is the practical ordering of time and space which enables the total time and space of every movement unit to be filled with a common quality and thrust into the total time and space of history. Discipline is the style of life behind the style of life that is visible in the world. As such it is symbolic of the very knowing, doing and being of those who embody it.

89. Discipline is entirely functional. It is formulated and embodied solely for the sake of mission. Its validity is measured by the extent to which it enables a people to accomplish their tasks. The discipline of the spirit movement performs this fundamental function by binding the movement together, holding it in being, assuring collegiality and basic structures of confidence and powerful corporateness. Operating in its totality the discipline provides the basic care for every member without which he will not be a revolutionary presence in history.

90. The form of the common discipline corresponds to the three dimensions of sociality-economic, political, and cultural. The particulars in each dimension form around three functional necessities and comprise a construct which, in its totality, is inclusive of every aspect of life within the movement. This form is universal throughout the entire movement though the precise way in which the particulars are formed may vary in each unit. It is the common discipline which enables the movement to hold in missional tension the corporateness and diversity necessary in a world of perpetual change.

THE ECONOMIC COMMONNESS

91. The discipline of the spirit movement is missional. The concrete form of that discipline is derived from the vision of the task to rebuild the church and the earth. The only resources the movement has to fulfill its vision is its people: their time, talent, energy, and their storedup labor in the form of money, property, or influence. Missional economics means that all these resources find meaning only in the light of the task. The concrete ordering of the economic life takes place in this context.

COMMON
OBLIGATION
92. The movement subjects its total economic life to a radical discipline for the sake of mission and in order that its missional presence may be empowered. It is a practical necessity that many ways be devised to hold in common whatever resources are needed for the task. There are no individual goods in an ultimate sense. Such economic discipline is a universal requirement for all revolutionary movements. The total resources of the movement are appropriated by each unit and are given back to the tasks of the movement in the total expenditure of each unit's life, whether a family, a cadre, or an order. Each spirit person takes responsibility for and is obedient to the economic needs of every colleague. Herein lies the freedom from the tyranny of the present economic order which is necessary for the perpetual revolutionary engagement that is the movement's thrust in history.

COMMON
BUDGETS
93. Each member constructs a budget whose revolutionary power is first its missional o theological rationale. What is needed is determined solely within the selfunderstanding an missional imperatives which define the movement's being and doing. The budget deal openly and straightforwardly with the inequities that are a part of common life. Some members bring to the corporate economic discipline more goods than others. Such diversity
is more equitably balanced by being common knowledge and by the discipline of group
responsibility and final corporate obedience. An equalized living scale, differing according the demands of the mission manifests commonality and sets free sums adequate for the maintenance of tasks which could not otherwise be financed. While the budgets of each member or family will have the same structure, determined by the common calling, each one individually reflects the uniqueness of that member's needs and intentions.

COMMON
ASSIGNMENTS
94. The movement reckons the time of each member and unit as resources. Discipline of time is as necessary as discipline of money. There is no vocational commitment apart from the mission, and each occupation is evaluated for its missional potential both in its provision of time and money. A discipline of assignment to movement tasks is based on the needs of the corporate thrust rather than on the desires of the individual involved. This discipline assures the availability of every member and unit to the total movement at any point and is developed within the various corporate structures from families to councils. Each person shares in the conduct of the administrative necessities and none is exempt from those enabling chores which, though monotonous, are crucial for the maintenance of the mission.

95. The quality of life to be manifest in all these economic forms might be called "missional poverty." For the people of the movement, nothing they own is simply theirs, but all of their life, including their goods, belongs to all the earth. Whether a particular rule symbolizes this in an undramatic way or in a radical way, the commitment required of the movement people is all-their very death. This is their poverty.

THE POLITICAL COMMONNESS

96. The discipline of the spirit movement is also decisional. The polity of the movement is that part of the total discipline which operates against all tendencies toward legalism in holding discipline to be utterly relative to mission. It undermines authoritarianism by assuring and demanding the full decisional participation of every member in all polity structures. A movement must deal with the concrete way in which its election is acknowledged and embodied, its rule of life, and its decisionmaking methodology.

COMMON
COVENANTS
97. The discipline of the spirit movement is covenantal. The concrete form of that discipline is derived from the vision of the calling to be the covenantal people of God in the form of a corporate spirit movement. Each group lives out of a conscious and unconscious covenant to be that group. When any group decides to exist, some basic ordering of its life must begin. This ordering is often formulated as a document, but consists also in the group memory which holds a wider verbalization and interpretation of the founding covenant, its context, selfunderstanding, and dynamics. These very documents fill such a need for the whole movement. The integrity of each member and unit rests on their decisions to articulate and bind themselves to a covenant and so order their lives. It is never imposed from outside and is relative only to its own self-understanding and mission.

COMMON
RULES
98. When any group becomes covenantal some operating rule of life must begin. The rule of a movement defines the particulars of economic, political, and cultural commonness before which the group has decided to hold itself accountable. Accountability, as a part of this rule, is first a part of the normal operation of group pressure. Second, it is direct questioning with regard to specific tasks, and third, it is symbolic in that it recognizes the relativity of the rule itself and opens the possibility to the individual of making a new decision about his life vocation. Further, every rule includes a leadership system which may designate one person or several persons as the unit's leadership in a rotating or more permanent basis. Like all other aspects of the discipline, the leadership system is determined solely by the task to be accomplished.

COMMON
CONSENSUS
99. Full participation in the decisionmaking process is maintained by means of participatory consensus. Each individual participates with his words, his deeds, and his being in determining the decisions about the economic and cultural functions. Unless it is challenged, consensus which is proclaimed by any member of the group stands as the decision of the group and all are bound to it. Consensusmaking goes beyond any simple concept of fairness or onemanonevote democracy. It is the corporate process of arriving at a model of operation obedient to the spirit of the group which has covenanted to be obedient to the common mission in Jesus Christ. The direction of consensus is set by prior decisions and those who keep silent are no less bound than those who speak. The process of participatory consensusmaking enables the group to effect its time design down to the last hour so that it continues to be a corporate presence in history.

100.The quality of life to be manifest in all these political forms might be called "paradoxical obedience." in obligation to that final covenant which alone gives freedom, the people of the movement spend their freedom in a structured way. These forms of the movement require obedience of the free man because they are his freedom in that he has abandoned himself to this course of action. Yet no form is divine; thus the movement units are nonchalant toward the very forms which define their being. The people of the movement live between moralism and unintentionality, between obedience to the community and individual creativity. This tension is their obedience.

THE CULTURAL COMMONNESS

101 The discipline of the spirit movement is emblematic. In its cultural dimension it functions as the transparent habit by which the spirit person is recognized. It is the garb which indicates .literally the new direction of time itself. It points to the future both as a sign and a mark and in a way it holds the movement in missional being. There is a sense in which any revolutionary movement already indicates the fruits of the revolution which it intends to accomplish. For this very reason the cultural dimension of the discipline is most crucial.

COMMON
SYMBOLS
102. !f the people of the movement are to maintain their grounding in the common selfunderstanding, it is crucial that the corporate body participate in the cultic acts ir which the primal mythic story is acted out. The selfunderstanding of the community I' enacted in Primal Rites such as the Eucharist, corporate office, and solitary office. The rite. of baptism, marriage, funerals, and other rites of passage should be celebrated in a futuric way. The Usual Rites, such as the meal rites, rites of receiving and sending, greetings and songs are also imperative. Without these symbolic activities, the people of the movement would have no way to stand objectively before their calling and would cease to be the missional people. These disciplined acts are primal activities for every movement unit.

COMMON IMAGES 103. The knowledge of the 20th century is so vast and complex that it is difficult for any one person to hold it in his consciousness. The ordering of corporate intellectual life enables a using of all the world's wisdom for the sake of all the world. The common mind composed of a common memory, common anticipation, and struggle with common problems enables each person to have access to broad gestalts of wealth of relevant wisdom. The group life itself functions as the educational structure as it engages in study of particular writings, shares research gleaned from travel, engages in structured conversation, participates in the customs of other cultures through meals and celebrations, and struggles with its relation to the issues of our times. Finally, all members of the group are both students and teachers in that each has the opportunity to participate through the use of common group methodologies: study, pedagogical, and theological. Developing an educational discipline is imperative in all movement units.

COMMON STYLES 104. The movement people assume a posture in the world that befits the new church that is being built. They also assume a posture that befits the scientific, urban, secular world in which all live. The movement man lives this complex life rhythm as a unifying thinker of cosmopolitan scope and depth spirit transparency. He lives the constant change as a perpetual builder of temporal models. He lives the global interdependence as a relational being, structurally engaged, and battling the forces of reduction and reaction in the very soul of the world. He lives the global risk as a predictor, a man rooted in tomorrow's society, a man who lives out of the confidence that resides in his own authenticity. All the postural practices of his life-his garb, his hair, his mode of conversation, the decor of his dwelling-proclaim the presence of the new man.

105. The quality of life to be manifest in all these cultural forms might be called "religious chastity." The people of the movement are covenanted in a holy marriage with God. No other covenant comes ahead of this covenant. Chastity means singleness of loyalty. Only that act which is guided by the inclusive and the futuric is chaste. Only that act which honors the primordial actuality that never changes is chaste. Only that act which is free, searing intentionality is chaste. The people of the movement live in the context of willing this one thing, to serve God. This is their chastity.

CONCLUS ION

106. Every revolutionary movement has to care for its members. The practice of corporate discipline is care for the covenant man. Without the provision of basic care the mission will be undermined by the unmet needs of the movement members. Disciplined care is never provided for the sake of maintaining some arbitrary standard of "health," but rather and solely for the purpose of holding the mission in being. In this regard, the discipline assures practical sustenance that cannot be left to friendship or whim but is built into the daily or weekly rhythm of meeting and working. Care is also provided so that specific missional tasks may be enabled. Further, and most important, care is provided in the spirit journey through structures of responsibility in which the group is present to every member as priest and brother.

107. These are twentyseven disciplinary particulars which hold any unit of the spirit movement in being. Each particular is so crucial that it must be clearly understood that the omission of any one renders the discipline inadequate for the maintenance of the mission or the sustenance of the members. Each movement unit uses this practical construct to test and evaluate its own internal life.

108. In summation, the practice of corporate discipline is the act of being the church. The intentional people of God are distinguished from the latent church and all other expressions of depth humanness by their discipline. The intentional church is that people who selfconsciously discipline their lives to be the church as a lifelong vocation.

EPILOGUE

109. The first half of Century Twenty has thrust man into a new dimension of his universal struggle to create his destiny. Nothing less will suffice than the practical realization of that which man has long known yet, to this time, dared not claim: that all the earth belongs to all the people, that all decisions of history belong to all the people, that all creations of humanness belong to all the people. The cry is heard for the creation of the new face of the planet. The future awaits the form of its being and that form must be for all the people. None other than the revolutionary People of God has vision large enough for that comprehensive, destinal task.

110.Every man lives in a particular historical context, only there can he die. In the revolution for universal humanness, the People of God must move here, there, step by step, always with common discipline and common weaponry, expending themselves in achieving specific tactics, not with bursts of isolated creativity but as strategic charges in common dynamic objectives. Each action in the revolution, regardless of dimension, is done on behalf of all and, as such, embodies the whole movement. The response to the cry for the creation of destiny is never in abstraction but always in particularity. The blood of the battle is spilled only on some Golgotha, unknown, unheralded. None other than the revolutionary People of God have decisional prowess for that practical, representational task.

111. To decide to live on behalf of all to create the new humanness of the future, and, to decide to die on behalf of all at a particular time and place in history is, for the revolutionary, one and the same decision-to decide to embody the tension between the universal and the particular. To embrace the paradox, without the tension, without the practical decision, there is no movement. Many hear, not all respond. Forever changing are those who seize this moment; changed forever are those who do not. The cry is made. The demand is clear. The way is open. Embody now what is to be.

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	INTRODUCTION V. THE COMMON DISCIPLINES 88. The spirit movement is its discipline. No revolution was ever accomplished without discipline. In all social life men act out of some discipline, whether consciously or unconsciously. The discipline of the spirit movement is first of all intentionally constructed. It is the practical ordering of time and space which enables the total time and space of every movement unit to be filled with a common quality and thrust into the total time and space of history. Discipline is the style of life behind the style of life that is visible in the world. As such it is symbolic of the very knowing, doing and being of those who embody it. 89. Discipline is entirely functional. It is formulated and embodied solely for the sake of mission. Its validity is measured by the extent to which it enables a people to accomplish their tasks. The discipline of the spirit movement performs this fundamental function by binding the movement together, holding it in being, assuring collegiality and basic structures of confidence and powerful corporateness. Operating in its totality the discipline provides the basic care for every member without which he will not be a revolutionary presence in history. 90. The form of the common discipline corresponds to the three dimensions of sociality-economic, political, and cultural. The particulars in each dimension form around three functional necessities and comprise a construct which, in its totality, is inclusive of every aspect of life within the movement. This form is universal throughout the entire movement though the precise way in which the particulars are formed may vary in each unit. It is the common discipline which enables the movement to hold in missional tension the corporateness and diversity necessary in a world of perpetual change. THE ECONOMIC COMMONNESS 91. The discipline of the spirit movement is missional. The concrete form of that discipline is derived from the vision of the task to rebuild the church and the earth. The only resources the movement has to fulfill its vision is its people: their time, talent, energy, and their storedup labor in the form of money, property, or influence. Missional economics means that all these resources find meaning only in the light of the task. The concrete ordering of the economic life takes place in this context.
COMMON OBLIGATION	92. The movement subjects its total economic life to a radical discipline for the sake of mission and in order that its missional presence may be empowered. It is a practical necessity that many ways be devised to hold in common whatever resources are needed for the task. There are no individual goods in an ultimate sense. Such economic discipline is a universal requirement for all revolutionary movements. The total resources of the movement are appropriated by each unit and are given back to the tasks of the movement in the total expenditure of each unit's life, whether a family, a cadre, or an order. Each spirit person takes responsibility for and is obedient to the economic needs of every colleague. Herein lies the freedom from the tyranny of the present economic order which is necessary for the perpetual revolutionary engagement that is the movement's thrust in history.
COMMON BUDGETS	93. Each member constructs a budget whose revolutionary power is first its missional o theological rationale. What is needed is determined solely within the selfunderstanding an missional imperatives which define the movement's being and doing. The budget deal openly and straightforwardly with the inequities that are a part of common life. Some members bring to the corporate economic discipline more goods than others. Such diversity is more equitably balanced by being common knowledge and by the discipline of group responsibility and final corporate obedience. An equalized living scale, differing according the demands of the mission manifests commonality and sets free sums adequate for the maintenance of tasks which could not otherwise be financed. While the budgets of each member or family will have the same structure, determined by the common calling, each one individually reflects the uniqueness of that member's needs and intentions.
COMMON ASSIGNMENTS	94. The movement reckons the time of each member and unit as resources. Discipline of time is as necessary as discipline of money. There is no vocational commitment apart from the mission, and each occupation is evaluated for its missional potential both in its provision of time and money. A discipline of assignment to movement tasks is based on the needs of the corporate thrust rather than on the desires of the individual involved. This discipline assures the availability of every member and unit to the total movement at any point and is developed within the various corporate structures from families to councils. Each person shares in the conduct of the administrative necessities and none is exempt from those enabling chores which, though monotonous, are crucial for the maintenance of the mission.
	95. The quality of life to be manifest in all these economic forms might be called "missional poverty." For the people of the movement, nothing they own is simply theirs, but all of their life, including their goods, belongs to all the earth. Whether a particular rule symbolizes this in an undramatic way or in a radical way, the commitment required of the movement people is all-their very death. This is their poverty. THE POLITICAL COMMONNESS 96. The discipline of the spirit movement is also decisional. The polity of the movement is that part of the total discipline which operates against all tendencies toward legalism in holding discipline to be utterly relative to mission. It undermines authoritarianism by assuring and demanding the full decisional participation of every member in all polity structures. A movement must deal with the concrete way in which its election is acknowledged and embodied, its rule of life, and its decisionmaking methodology.
COMMON COVENANTS	97. The discipline of the spirit movement is covenantal. The concrete form of that discipline is derived from the vision of the calling to be the covenantal people of God in the form of a corporate spirit movement. Each group lives out of a conscious and unconscious covenant to be that group. When any group decides to exist, some basic ordering of its life must begin. This ordering is often formulated as a document, but consists also in the group memory which holds a wider verbalization and interpretation of the founding covenant, its context, selfunderstanding, and dynamics. These very documents fill such a need for the whole movement. The integrity of each member and unit rests on their decisions to articulate and bind themselves to a covenant and so order their lives. It is never imposed from outside and is relative only to its own self-understanding and mission.
COMMON RULES	98. When any group becomes covenantal some operating rule of life must begin. The rule of a movement defines the particulars of economic, political, and cultural commonness before which the group has decided to hold itself accountable. Accountability, as a part of this rule, is first a part of the normal operation of group pressure. Second, it is direct questioning with regard to specific tasks, and third, it is symbolic in that it recognizes the relativity of the rule itself and opens the possibility to the individual of making a new decision about his life vocation. Further, every rule includes a leadership system which may designate one person or several persons as the unit's leadership in a rotating or more permanent basis. Like all other aspects of the discipline, the leadership system is determined solely by the task to be accomplished.
COMMON CONSENSUS	99. Full participation in the decisionmaking process is maintained by means of participatory consensus. Each individual participates with his words, his deeds, and his being in determining the decisions about the economic and cultural functions. Unless it is challenged, consensus which is proclaimed by any member of the group stands as the decision of the group and all are bound to it. Consensusmaking goes beyond any simple concept of fairness or onemanonevote democracy. It is the corporate process of arriving at a model of operation obedient to the spirit of the group which has covenanted to be obedient to the common mission in Jesus Christ. The direction of consensus is set by prior decisions and those who keep silent are no less bound than those who speak. The process of participatory consensusmaking enables the group to effect its time design down to the last hour so that it continues to be a corporate presence in history.
	100.The quality of life to be manifest in all these political forms might be called "paradoxical obedience." in obligation to that final covenant which alone gives freedom, the people of the movement spend their freedom in a structured way. These forms of the movement require obedience of the free man because they are his freedom in that he has abandoned himself to this course of action. Yet no form is divine; thus the movement units are nonchalant toward the very forms which define their being. The people of the movement live between moralism and unintentionality, between obedience to the community and individual creativity. This tension is their obedience. THE CULTURAL COMMONNESS 101 The discipline of the spirit movement is emblematic. In its cultural dimension it functions as the transparent habit by which the spirit person is recognized. It is the garb which indicates .literally the new direction of time itself. It points to the future both as a sign and a mark and in a way it holds the movement in missional being. There is a sense in which any revolutionary movement already indicates the fruits of the revolution which it intends to accomplish. For this very reason the cultural dimension of the discipline is most crucial.
COMMON SYMBOLS	102. !f the people of the movement are to maintain their grounding in the common selfunderstanding, it is crucial that the corporate body participate in the cultic acts ir which the primal mythic story is acted out. The selfunderstanding of the community I' enacted in Primal Rites such as the Eucharist, corporate office, and solitary office. The rite. of baptism, marriage, funerals, and other rites of passage should be celebrated in a futuric way. The Usual Rites, such as the meal rites, rites of receiving and sending, greetings and songs are also imperative. Without these symbolic activities, the people of the movement would have no way to stand objectively before their calling and would cease to be the missional people. These disciplined acts are primal activities for every movement unit.
COMMON IMAGES	103. The knowledge of the 20th century is so vast and complex that it is difficult for any one person to hold it in his consciousness. The ordering of corporate intellectual life enables a using of all the world's wisdom for the sake of all the world. The common mind composed of a common memory, common anticipation, and struggle with common problems enables each person to have access to broad gestalts of wealth of relevant wisdom. The group life itself functions as the educational structure as it engages in study of particular writings, shares research gleaned from travel, engages in structured conversation, participates in the customs of other cultures through meals and celebrations, and struggles with its relation to the issues of our times. Finally, all members of the group are both students and teachers in that each has the opportunity to participate through the use of common group methodologies: study, pedagogical, and theological. Developing an educational discipline is imperative in all movement units.
COMMON STYLES	104. The movement people assume a posture in the world that befits the new church that is being built. They also assume a posture that befits the scientific, urban, secular world in which all live. The movement man lives this complex life rhythm as a unifying thinker of cosmopolitan scope and depth spirit transparency. He lives the constant change as a perpetual builder of temporal models. He lives the global interdependence as a relational being, structurally engaged, and battling the forces of reduction and reaction in the very soul of the world. He lives the global risk as a predictor, a man rooted in tomorrow's society, a man who lives out of the confidence that resides in his own authenticity. All the postural practices of his life-his garb, his hair, his mode of conversation, the decor of his dwelling-proclaim the presence of the new man.
	105. The quality of life to be manifest in all these cultural forms might be called "religious chastity." The people of the movement are covenanted in a holy marriage with God. No other covenant comes ahead of this covenant. Chastity means singleness of loyalty. Only that act which is guided by the inclusive and the futuric is chaste. Only that act which honors the primordial actuality that never changes is chaste. Only that act which is free, searing intentionality is chaste. The people of the movement live in the context of willing this one thing, to serve God. This is their chastity. CONCLUS ION 106. Every revolutionary movement has to care for its members. The practice of corporate discipline is care for the covenant man. Without the provision of basic care the mission will be undermined by the unmet needs of the movement members. Disciplined care is never provided for the sake of maintaining some arbitrary standard of "health," but rather and solely for the purpose of holding the mission in being. In this regard, the discipline assures practical sustenance that cannot be left to friendship or whim but is built into the daily or weekly rhythm of meeting and working. Care is also provided so that specific missional tasks may be enabled. Further, and most important, care is provided in the spirit journey through structures of responsibility in which the group is present to every member as priest and brother. 107. These are twentyseven disciplinary particulars which hold any unit of the spirit movement in being. Each particular is so crucial that it must be clearly understood that the omission of any one renders the discipline inadequate for the maintenance of the mission or the sustenance of the members. Each movement unit uses this practical construct to test and evaluate its own internal life. 108. In summation, the practice of corporate discipline is the act of being the church. The intentional people of God are distinguished from the latent church and all other expressions of depth humanness by their discipline. The intentional church is that people who selfconsciously discipline their lives to be the church as a lifelong vocation. EPILOGUE 109. The first half of Century Twenty has thrust man into a new dimension of his universal struggle to create his destiny. Nothing less will suffice than the practical realization of that which man has long known yet, to this time, dared not claim: that all the earth belongs to all the people, that all decisions of history belong to all the people, that all creations of humanness belong to all the people. The cry is heard for the creation of the new face of the planet. The future awaits the form of its being and that form must be for all the people. None other than the revolutionary People of God has vision large enough for that comprehensive, destinal task. 110.Every man lives in a particular historical context, only there can he die. In the revolution for universal humanness, the People of God must move here, there, step by step, always with common discipline and common weaponry, expending themselves in achieving specific tactics, not with bursts of isolated creativity but as strategic charges in common dynamic objectives. Each action in the revolution, regardless of dimension, is done on behalf of all and, as such, embodies the whole movement. The response to the cry for the creation of destiny is never in abstraction but always in particularity. The blood of the battle is spilled only on some Golgotha, unknown, unheralded. None other than the revolutionary People of God have decisional prowess for that practical, representational task. 111. To decide to live on behalf of all to create the new humanness of the future, and, to decide to die on behalf of all at a particular time and place in history is, for the revolutionary, one and the same decision-to decide to embody the tension between the universal and the particular. To embrace the paradox, without the tension, without the practical decision, there is no movement. Many hear, not all respond. Forever changing are those who seize this moment; changed forever are those who do not. The cry is made. The demand is clear. The way is open. Embody now what is to be.