| PAST
HISTORY | The decay of community life, the continuing rise of crime the loss of meaning of the educational structures, the entire collapse of human vocation are symptoms of the 20th century crisis, which calls us to search for structures that will effectively care for every part of human life. In 1964, practical experimentation began with the 5th City reformulation project in which the methods and models for creating primal community were forged. Out of summer research assemblies which developed social methods, the Religious House and Galaxy structures were birthed for the purpose of enabling viable primal community in the world. There has also been experimentation with the spirit methods necessary for sustaining primal community. While 5th City turns from experiment to global demonstration, the world has already picked up the sign and comprehensive community reformulation has begun in Oombulgurri, a rural aboriginal community, Uptown, an international city, the Marshall Islands, village projects and 100 demonstration communities across the globe. Now we see in the merging of the parish guild and local church experiments and in the expansion of those experiments across the world, the possibility of releasing primal community and comprehensive structures
for care across the whole globe. |
HISTORICAL DEMAND | The shudder and wrenching within our society brings cries of alarm and produces a variety of models that build a sustaining hope. Local man is declaring his care in a story that enables his efforts to bring to life the new human community. The historical church, moves successfully into the future by reclaiming its missional role of motivating servant through the massive use of indicative planning methods. A global network demonstrating the new humanness in comprehensive local care structures shows the possibility of caring for all human needs in every place. The time is now for the primal community to pick up the task of bringing about creative changes which will impact and unify the globe. |
FUTURE Future directions of the Primal Community Experiment demands
DIRECTIONS selfconscious engagement of locally trained leadership giving every man
the story by which he can engage in renewing human community. Sustaining local global men Over the long haul requires imagination, methodology, nurture, and renewal of the local church. Releasing the selfconscious story of the primal community is accomplished through trained guilds which will think tactically by inclusive planning and rehabilitation for all mankind. The role of future demonstrations will be to create signs which are reduplicable and allow global men to be released from past structures as projects are moved into other critical areas of human need such as work with a multinational corporation or shared action between two or more great religious systems. The future of corporate demonstration will be carried on the back of sustaining methodology.
STRUCTURAL The structural dynamics of the primal community form a single, but
DYNAMICS complex, web built through, under and around the social honeycomb. The
first dynamic is local men who have decided to live out their care, using
life methods that allow both creative intuition and rationality
to be used in the design of caring structures. The second is a
kit of images, methods, and structural tools, which allow comprehensive
ordering of primal community in each locality. The third dynamic
is a global interchange network that allows the creation of a
worldwide consensus on a practical vision of global human
community, in which all local communities can share. Those who
are selfconsciously present to the structural dynamics stand
shoulder to shoulder as a single force, working through these
three dynamics.
STRATEGIC Three strategic actions are directed toward the social fabric, to move the
ACTIONS local situation toward actualization of the global human community. The
first strategic action is planning, which analyzes within the context of
the historical and sociological situation in the light of the practical vision for human community. The second is training, which provides common practical skill at the local level and increases global consciousness and
occasions commonality. The third strategic action is demonstration which makes visible practical signs of possibility in the local situation such as a
businessman's guild or the Bicentennial celebration in the U.S.A.
IMPLEMENTARY The implementary systems of the primal community experiment are based
SYSTEMS on one global framework, where local man is enabled to give his life
for his neighbors. Three aspects of the system are: 1) social forces net, 2) local leadership training, and 3) indicative miracle creation. The internal structure of local forces which focuses the global network to catalyze the local situation is composed of the cadre, core, guild, galaxy, and task forces meeting for local battle planning and for corporate care. Leadership
training includes seminars, methods training schools, community
convoca-tions, and internship programs, which create vision and
transform that vision into action. Miracles which are planned
and exploded on a systematic basis include community celebrations,
town meetings, physical parish improvement signs, elders engagement
program, etc., to demons-trate the possibility of future reformulation.
In order to effectively implement the systems, revolutionary principles
are called for 24 hours a day, which hold the tension between
battleplan and intuition and call each force into frequent accountability
to his assigned task such is the task of the primal community
experiment.
PRIMAL The basic element of human settlement has always been the Primal
SERVANT Community. It moves man to create a world in which all can survive.
FORCE From the beginning, it has provided a way for every man to commonly care
for his local community on behalf of the world. Simultaneously
primal community has initiated the social change necessary to
sustain human life. History calls forth a new sense of interdependence
for all people, building on the servants of the Primal Community.
VISIONING The 20th century has brought such radical shifts in life that man
NEW human has lost a vision of the power and possibility of community,
STRUCTURES demanding a vivid illustration of effective human settlement. The collapse
of ancient institutions and values has revealed to man the need
to create a new mythology, which touches the common deeps of humanity
and practical forms which sustain him in a powerful and sensitive
life style. Recovery of primal community requires a comprehensive
context to awaken local man's consciousness of the global significance
of his actions. New structures for significant local engagement
must be created, grounded in the context and relationship of a
global society. Because we stand on the edge of awesome possibility,
local man must be fully engaged in forging a new vision to bring
the future into being.
GLOBAL The direction of Primal Community in the future is captured in the vision of
LOCAL a fully human society. It moves toward local man reclaiming his power
POWER over his present life and the future. lie will mold a new global society in
which both ethnic and religious interactions are realized. It
will be experienced as a world wide human resettlement network
which would enable man in his local community to recover meaningful
engagement and thus demonstrate a new hope for the future.
MOTIVATING The new local man will show up as a man out of whose caring for the
CORPORATE world there will emerge a new hope for the globe. The primal community
CARE dynamics of corporate action , indicative care and engagement motivation
release full humanness in the midst of forging the necessary sociological
forms. Corporateness is the key to an effective dynamic community
where all persons are freed to make care decisions on behalf of
every man. Indicative care that is both comprehensive and relates
to the situation as it is, rather than the situation wished for,
is necessary. Engagement motivation continually identifies and
symbolizes the exhilaration occurring in the process of expending
life for the sake of facilitating the human journey. In operating
out of these dynamics, the primal community is not only manifested
within ourselves but actualized in society.
CORPORATE The strategic actions of the Primal Community involve three arenas indirect
STRATEGIC analytic mobilization, equipping man's care, and consciousness cracking
ACTION miracles. Indirect catalytic mobilization takes place in the Primal
Community as local man is shown the possibility of working corporately
to channel the consciousness and direct the force of the community
toward the future. The Primal Community acts in equipping man's
care through methods and training to structurally release and
sustain man's depth passion for caring. The Primal Community releases
consciousness cracking miracles calling forth local man to love
his own space and time. The Primal Community acts in equipping
man's care through indirect catalytic mobilization exploded through
breaking open local man's consciousness.
ACTUALIZING The necessary systems for the creation of primal community across
SYSTEMS the globe are: a system for local/global wisdom interchange, a global
NETWORK net of local care and a global net of support forces. Global wisdom
interchange facilitates an inclusive flow of wisdom and resources.
The global network of local care provides the common methods that
give form to man's motivity. Finally a global net of local support
forces releases both comprehensive and local authorization for
the acting out of care based on the corporate wisdom. dhen these
systems are fully operative Primal Community is no longer theory
but reality.
PAST The past reveals man's quest for a meaningful form of human settlement.
HISTORY Primal community has been the perpetual human search for the adequate
forms of caring for self and neighbor in the given historical situation. As the new community aged, its corporate needs and reasons for coming into being were lost, leading to individualism, failure and collapse of care
structures and loss of purpose. In the midst of many failures, ongoing experiments attempted to rebuild the community around the core leadership in a limited geography, usually showing up in a local religious
institution. The collapse of old structures raises questions about
the forms necessary for more human primal community.
HISTORICAL The anguished cry for the recreation of primal community arises out
DEMAND of the impact of the increased velocity of time and space on our
civilization. As humanity has moved to structure itself into a global
form, local man has lost his sense of local identity and no longer
has a methodology for effectively demonstrating his care. The
historical demand for a new response has to do with the mission
of the people recapturing neighborhood, building a miracle, fulfillment
of past time, embodying humanness common to all and the channeling
of fullness for creation. The demonstration sign will give people
the way to concretely participate in creating the global local
community through appropriating the past, affirming the present
and its unique gifts and beckoning the new society by embodying
it now. In light of this triune dimension we image the historical
demand of the people of the earth to struggle together over the
style appropriate for the future, as evidenced in the recent World
Food Conference.
FUTURE Not disregarding the past and the present, the primal community must
DIRECTION ask where the future is leading, and to evolve in an appropriate direction it
must pause and watch for signals. Primal community is a network
of new global neighborhoods ringing the planet in which local
man decides his future in the context of all the earth. The new
human style enabling the creation of universal primal community
will be anchored in an urban sub-consciousness that fosters corporateness
and taps the gifts and skills of all, having duly considered our
rootage and traditions in caring for one another. Renewed primal
community is a signal demonstration of resurgence in its practicality,
its creativity, and indicative form. Signal demonstration of resurgence
and consensus at the grassroot level will globalize a comprehensive
universal network of corporate care.
STRUCTURAL Structural dynamics embody structural form, corporate methods, and
DYNAMICS catalytic style. The structural forms include the local dynamics of cadreing
congregating, and guilding and the networks that relate the local
forms globally. The corporate methods involve building consensus, developing strategic action on proposals and sustaining commitment to one depth human purpose. The catalytic style passionately embraced by the leadership enables structures to come alive, care to be enacted, and
tasks to be fulfilled. Primal community is a sociological reality
whenever those dynamics are self-consciously operating.
STRATEGIC Procedurally, strategic actions recognize the structural dynamics while
ACTIONS breaking open the community to give it possibility through seeing a
concrete fulfillment of an impossibility. The community's consciousness is
awakened by means of consensus building, problem solving and framing the community circuitry. The spirit dimension of strategic action is that which raises the sign of possibility by exploding the readiness of the
present situation through the catalytic miracle that focuses the one action that moves the whole. The primal community dynamic requires simultaneous engagement of the whole community by the corporate
action in the style of creative servanthood which releases community
care in the global context. Finally, strategic action is the result
of comprehensive analysis, doing indicative miracles, and building
corporateness for the sake of raising the global sign.
IMPLEMENTARY The key to implementing primal community is a global network of
SYSTEMS resurgent communities, comprehensively interrelated, and realized by
revolutionary care structures at the local level. This radical demonstration happens in communities through miracles that break loose new images of possibility for the future. This is dependent on the corporate action of a revolutionary core, sustained and engaged as galaxy and guild. Visual demonstrations are events such as community congress, town meetings training sessions and signal symbolic activity. At every point of historical crisis, primal community has been assigned the scandalous task of creating sociological hope, a practical vehicle for freighting humanness' "And he
built him an ark."
PAST A fundamental contradiction discerned through actualization of the Local
HISTORY Church Experiment over the past four years has been the isolation and
imbalances between the economic and cultural dynamics. Movemental forces have learned through its social methods to build open ended models capable of local revision and adaptation. Our corporate gift to the world is the willingness and demand to relate to the inherent ambiguity and chaotic dynamism of life itself. The initial efforts to recreate primal community were forged out in such prototype experiments as the Iona Community, Fifth City, the Local Church Experiment and the Oombulgurri aboriginal community. me development of the Life Methods of corporate action, depth motivity and tactical thinking paved the way for primary community demonstrations. On January 1, 1974 in a global celebration, our vision of transformed communities took form in the launching of the Guild
Experiment through the vehicle of the 26 week timeline. The past
history of the Primal Community Experiment has come out of the
expenditure of thousands of persons across the globe and
the evolving principles and methods are being offered for the
benefit of every local man across the globe.
HISTORICAL The Primal Community Experiment is an evolving, structural response to
DEMAND the happening of the twentieth century. The twentieth century has
experienced the total collapse of humanizing structures such as the
family, the neighborhood, the city and also a collapse of spirit as experienced in the loss of a viable self story, a sense of alienation and a rising hopelessness over the sense of what is possible and yet unrealized. The twentieth century maelstrom has brought to flower a realization that man has one global destiny. Out of the new conscious ness man has experienced his caring and sees that practical care begins with the empowering of local structures as signs of global impact. A new people
have been called forth who would not turn away from the inescapable
life demand of our times and who would be the new story of possibility
for the globe.
STRUCTURAL Internal dynamics to sustain the missional thrust of the experiment include
DYNAMICS local structures to continually recreate the vision and maintain corporate
action. The creation of local structures of consensus and action planning range from the more inclusive, like the torn meeting or congress, that give local residents the opportunity to consense on the direction and needs of
the community. The task force is a temporary structure for direct
action and the guild is a catalytic servant force of the
community. Working and planning together, making decisions by
consensus, singing and celebrating achieve the corporateness necessary
to enable the grassroots man to renew his own community. Creating
the vision of the future, global in context and grounded in the
local situation, along with the cruciform life style is the invisible
glue holding the Primal Community together. These internal dynamics
enable the mission for the freedom of man to forge out his intuitions
that are conducive to the building of a better world.
STRATEGIC The tools needed for strategic action in the primal community experiment
ACTION are indepth training, inclusive authorization, and communityinvolved
planning.training activities embodying direct and indirect methodologies are held in formal and in formal constructs for all local persons to equip them as catalytic agents in community reformulation. Getting the nod of local community leaders and the establishment opens the door to releasing
the primal community. Indicative battle planning underlies the global/local thrust of the Primal Community Experiment and projects the daytoday
actions. These three strategic activities will provide the necessary
famework for local guildsmen to embody global, practical care
for their community.
IMPLEMENTARY Implementary systems required for the ongoing releasing symbolic
SYSTEMS activities of the Primal Community Experiment are life and signs, actualized
grassroots involvement and regular local tactical modification.
The primal community is finally sustained by a rythmic corporate
symbolic life through prayer, songs, symbols, celebrative meals
and corporate miracle creation, rehearsing the on behalfof
nature of the experiment. Grassroots participa-tion is enabled
by community PSU's, task forces and covenantal account-ability.
To keep the implementary system faithful to the actual situation,
it must be regularly evaluated and subject to necessary modification.
When the symbolic core of those who care involves the total community
in that care on a week by week basis, the life of that community
becomes an intensified sign of hope.
FUTURE As always in the midst of forging what a social demonstration is in history,
DIRECTION the question comes of what is its future direction. Local Man must
manifest hope and direction to the globe through the planning,
execution, and demonstration of miracles. The primal community's
global network of communication would celebrate building of local
communities and allow the sharing of decisions through a global
interchange system. The development of local leadership, utilization
of structured endeavor, and renewal of symbolic life will engage
local man in the evolution of global mankind. When it is that
these catalyzing actions are acted upon in any local situation,
the future will be created.
RADICAL Man's current experimentation with primal community flows out of
HUMAN centuries of human struggle to forge a practical vision and corporate
REBIRTH methods for producing new social signs of depth human care. Experiments
in Fifth City, Oombulgurri, Uptown 5 and Majuro have discerned
and created methods for recontexting reformulating, remotivating,
out of practical engagement in the everyday life of local
communities across the world. The journey of man is a journey
in primal community in which the collapse of inadequate sociological
forms raises the question which leads to confrontation with the
Mystery of human existence and reveals the inherent indicative
of care which in our time can only be in terms of comprehensive,
global revolutions as local man renews his structures to bring
to birth a new integrity of human society.
THE NEW The historical situation of the times reveals within itself the demand
HUMAN informing us of the operating indicative. Confronting the collapse
of political structures, the collapse of economic principles and
the "No's" being said by the youth of every culture,
Man witnesses the going out of being of the basic structures of
modern society. Life has always been related to life, and in our
times the new interdependence of the global and local situation
demands globally replicable forms. Individualism has died; new
structures of corporate care are demanded which embody the practical
vision of the next 1000 years. All of this points to the birth
of a new consciousness and new style of man's relationship to
himself, his neighbor and his globe.
THE VISION As the world shoves its globality and human interdependence upon us, it
calls for a viable style for the 21st century. In every culture and on every
continent, signals of human community will be created to demonstrate
this possibility for the entire world. The interlinking of these
demonstrations in a globallv structured framework, creates
corporate dynamics of accounta-bility, discipline and sustenance
of troops. At the local level, selfconscious, delimited
geographic human settlement is catalyzed by care groups. Renewed
primal community is the future of our world.
STRUCTURAL To allow effective social demonstration of primal community it is necessary
DYNAMICS to structurally hold global commonness, local action, and depth motivity.
The global network is expressed in a common operating frame, locally modified, directly related to the social imbalances as discerned both locally and globally. The local action structure is grounded in the guild which is
comprised fo self conscious caring forces rooted in the geographically delineated community and in an iron core of secular saints. The depth motivity is continually regenerated through periodic planning and evaluating councils which sustain the troops on the Long March. It
is by way of these three dynamics that the contradictions of frustrated
activism and abstract theorizing are reformed into an effective
global demonstration.
STRATEGIC The trends of history demand cooperative interfacing of three distinct
ACTIONS arenas. Because of the thrust of strategic actions, grassroots participa-
tion is enabled through the tactical thinking, corporate action and
motivational means. Strategic actions secure local authorization by holding businessmen's LENS, contacting community agencies, inviting local
politicians to participate and holding Local Community Convocation's
to include all relevant structures in order to secure funding,
backing and participation in the primal community. Demonstration
signs elicit from local man the possibility for engagement in
the particular on behalf of the globe. We stand on the edge of
an historical vantage point which calls for vigorous interaction
through inclusive, strategic actions.
IMPLEMENTARY Implementary systems has to do with what it takes to actualize the
SYSTEMS indicative vision of 104 communities. The process of indicative
battle planning is key to the experiment and deals with how we maintain ongoing research, build a practical vision and daily modification
which produces the procedures that push to the bottom images of what to do in reforming a community. A system needs to be designed that hold guilding, congregating, and ordering forces in a network that allows local engagement to have focused global impact. Caring localman's story an 1 symbols is told through an inclusive network of miracle demonstra- tions holding the inter-dependence of primal communities and its relationship to the globe. The implementary systems are the backbone of primal
community experiment which sustains, motivates, and maintains
the local experiment on behalf of and is reduplicable anywhere
in the globe.
CADRE F PRIMAL COMMUNITY STORY SMS, 12/15/74
STRUCTURAL The structural dynamic of the primal community experiment is to DYNAMIC create the single corporate thrust forming a mosaic of human care
across the globe. A globally, interrelated network of local, selfconscious
people who form a band of practical care for human life around the world through primal guilds resulting in depth motivity from creative action as he engages in this task imaging his daily tactics as creating miracles.
Corporate action is the invisible sociological form of the structural
dyna-mics releasing the passion of local man. The structural dynamic
of the primal community experiment enables a global network to
come into being. The essence of which, human motivity, shows up
as corporate action.
STRATEGIC The strategic actions for primal community experimentation will
ACTIONS capitalize on extensive proven social demonstration signs, and utilize
miracle methodology and a catalytic style of engagement. The experience gained from the past 20 years of primal community experimentation such as indicative battle planning, consensus forging, the 5th City presuppositions and the social process analysis have indicated the directions of the future. The miracle methodology creates visible practical forms of new community possibility. The catalytic style of engagement sows seeds locally for the globe and silently claims that possibility for others. The result will
be to send ripples of catalytic action spreading from the global
network of local demonstration signs to all human communities.
IMPLEMENTARY The orchestration of implementary systems will catalyze existing community
SYSTEMS networks and call forth creative participation of community residents.
Implementary systems are created through discerning the existing networks of authorization, funding and social process within the community
which become a frame for strategic action. The orchestration of
actualized local community miracles is done over a fouryear
period in a global frame which reinforces and sustains local creativity.
In the midst of implementing miracles, local people are released
for significant engagement as they experience themselves participating
in the seeming impossible through corporate action in their local
community, and therein experience a transformation in their relationship
to primal community. Implementing miracles, there fore weave together
the forces which finally catalyze the new world.
PAST History discloses man's repeated invention of primal community by those
HISTORY who shared the dangers of an alien world. In a time of transition of the
forms of community, a timeless invisible college has responded
to the human pain of change to form the necessary human community
to freight humanness for that time. Mankind had shown up in the
midst of the urbanized and technological twentieth century with
the outmoded and parochial images of community of his forefathers.
In particular, churchmen have been experimenting during the last
twenty years with ways of caring for local neighborhoods. These
efforts were focused in the 5th City project on the west side
of Chicago, which has demonstrated a breakthrough in local forms
of care. Already the models of 5th City are being replicated in
the aboriginal community of Oombulgurri and the Pacific Island
of Majuro and throughout the globe.
HISTORICAL The Twentieth century is a destinal moment in the whole history of
DEMAND mankind. The increased awareness of the reality of global inter-dependence
has revealed the inadequacy of the social forms that we inherited. Causes and projects, to date, in failing to recognize the depth and breadth of the problem, have left no guides for the future. Today, men are only willing to create a local community which allows every man to effectively engage the global and historical responsibility to a world society which has its roots for
the first time in a common vision of the future.
FUTURE The future demands a primal community experiment which can be likened to
DIRECTIONS a flotilla setting sail. The rapidly shrinking world is becoming more complex
and the demand for authentic and relevant community structures will become even more critical as each individual's fate interrelates with that of every other man. The primal community experiment is a perpetual voyage, a symbolic flotilla on the uncharted waters of the future from which no return is possible. Thus survival in this community and maintenance of its course requires that each ship's crew be
ordered, disciplined and able to fill many roles. The primal community that we are about to motivate into being will be a signal light on what it means to be the flotilla's crew where all roles are significant. The primal community experiment
will also beckon others and take responsibility for their care
as they adventure like pilot ships sent out on behalf of all.