I was very honored to receive this book in the mail from Dan Almeter, a long-time leader in the Alleluia Community in Georgia. In the note he attached he comments that Fr. Peter Hocken wrote the foreword. Oftentimes when Fr. Peter came to visit us at AHOP / CTR, he would be coming from the Alleluia Community, which he always tried to visit on his trips to the States. It is wonderful to have this connection with them, a shared love for (and from) Fr. Peter.
This is an important book for us at Christ the Reconciler, and very timely for our current focus on “community.” Let’s study it together, and be both challenged and encouraged!
Unity – On Earth As It Is In Heaven tells the story of the Alleluia Community, which was founded in February 1973 in Augusta, Georgia. That weekend, a historic snow of 15 inches fell on Augusta, shutting the entire area down. Twelve Catholics who had been recently filled with the Holy Spirit were trapped together in a large house. As they worshipped and prayed, surrounded by the snowstorm, they began to put into action the idea they had been discussing together for a year or so – intentional community. They wrote a covenant of life together and adopted it, forming the first nucleus of the Alleluia Community.
Their community has grown to more than 700, but they still have the same covenant that the original snow-bound dozen crafted almost fifty years ago.
Though the Alleluia Community began with only Catholics, they immediately sought the Lord as to whether they should also include Protestants. They heard an immediate “Yes!” from the Holy Spirit. Today about 10% of the community is Protestant, and they have also been joined by Orthodox believers and Messianic Jews.
Dan Almeter’s book is a wonderful recounting of this journey. He mixes stories from their decades of community life with a clarion call to living out John 17 (though they don’t use that same phrase, which we have adopted here at CTR). As such, Unity includes both inspiration for us, and practical understandings of the nitty-gritty of life in an intentional community. For example:
We know that in a Christian marriage each spouse is meant to help the other grow in holiness and mutual love. They learn to do this by dying to themselves through sacrificial love. Imagine having hundreds of opportunities every day to interact with a multitude of brothers and sisters of different backgrounds, different Christian traditions, different races, different personalities, different cultures – there’s no end to our differences. If we can grow in holiness and charity within our nuclear family, then we can grow exponentially in community, where we must die to ourselves and live in charity with hundreds of other Christians on a daily basis. This has, in fact, been our experience in community. After 40 years of living covenant life with one another, holiness and love have grown to a level where mutual communion is very real and palpable. A deep conversion to the Gospel has occurred within our midst.
What a gift! As we craft our own community commitment, we can learn from what the Holy Spirit has been doing in Alleluia. Hopefully we can avoid some of their mistakes – while no doubt making new ones of our own! The leaders of Alleluia Community have expressed a willingness to walk alongside us, without trying to make us “just like them.” Oh, the beauty of the body of Messiah!
If you are interested in going deeper than the Statement of Personal Devotion and considering the Community Commitment here at CTR, it is important for you to get a copy of this book from Amazon and read it.
Here is the link: