Go to content Go to navigation

An intentional community in Western Tennessee

Frequently Asked Questions

We have been asked many questions about what we believe, what we value, and just what "makes us tick". So we decided to put up a Frequently Asked Questions section on our website. Many of these questions are asked through email. We have taken the actual correspondence and put them in question and answer form. If something you are wondering about isn't covered here, feel free to email us. Enjoy!



Question: Can you tell us a little about your roots and history?

Answer:
We started in Geneva, FL over a decade ago. In a sense, we started in 1987, when Noah and Haviylah got married. I think Jeremiah and Magdala had just started being friends with them. Noah already really wanted to see real church life, where people gave up everything, and got together forever as brothers and sisters under God.

People slowly gathered, and at the start, except for our zeal for God and our goal of living real church life, with the kind of unity seen in Acts, we probably weren't that much different than anyone else outwardly. Noah was very influenced by Watchman Nee, and we would call Nee a forefather, though we've never personally met him. The church was learning to love being together, so some families moved into the homes of other families, until pretty much all 17 families in the church were living two families to a house.

At that point, through an interesting set of circumstances, they met a family from Bethel Springs, TN. Noah and Chashaq traveled from Geneva to meet them. Several of the families were totally excited about living a together life. God moved dramatically in people's hearts, sweeping through in repentance and zeal for God. The people in Tennessee wanted to experience true church life, and Noah and Chashaq prepared to move their families to Tennessee to be with them. At first we thought that there would be a "Church in Geneva" and a "Church in Bethel Springs". But, gradually, a few more of the families moved from Florida to Tennessee, and it soon became very clear that we just couldn't bear to be away from each other and what God was doing in Tenn. So between January 1, 1996 and January 15, 1997 (in one year's time) all seventeen families from Geneva moved to Bethel Springs.

In the end, God added to our numbers, and we all ended up living on one family's land, in four houses, one of which ended up quite large, with an 8 bedroom addition. In 1999, that family left the church and evicted all 200 of us from their land. We left gladly with nothing, asking nothing from them, experiencing, once again, the joy of leaving everything to follow Christ.

Separating never entered any of our minds, so all of us, which now included 35 families, moved onto a farm with one run-down, two-bedroom house. We moved into buses, RV's, and some of us into tents. Fortunately, it was summer. We built a couple of shower rooms, cold well-water only, and we used outhouses until we could get some infrastructure in place. We built cabins and renovated buses at first, but by last year, we were finally able to buy mobile homes for all of us. We got nice ones, or fixed up ones that were not so nice, so that we have reasonably permanent dwellings now, with proper electricity and septic. We are, again, living 2 to 3 families per house, and experiencing the growth that togetherness brings.

It was a long, difficult process, but it was a great time of abandon and growth, especially in the early days on this land. We have great memories of our kitchen tent, rain, mud, mugginess without air conditioners, etc.; and doing it all together!

We don't know what the future will bring. We have learned that we can't out-guess God. But we know the One we follow. And we'll follow him to Africa and back if that is His plan!


Question: Can you tell me a little more about your beliefs?

Answer:
Believe it or not, "I would like to know more about your beliefs" can be a difficult question for us to answer. Depending on people's backgrounds and why they're asking, we don't always really know what answer they're looking for. Some are looking for "We believe in the Trinity, salvation by faith, and an imminent return of Christ" sort of thing, but others are looking for things much different, maybe even just to know we're not a "cult."

Our "statement of faith" would be pretty much the same as everyone else's, but we don't consider the statement of faith very important.

"They will know you are my disciples by your love,"

And Yahshua's prayer,

"Father, I pray that they might be one, even as you and I are one, so that the world may know that you sent me,"

are passages that highlight to us the fact that the greatest two commandments are to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves. For us, the highlight of faith is what it produces. "Show me your faith without your works," said James, "and I will show you my faith by my works." We wondered in the past where the demonstration of Spirit and power was that Paul had spoken of.

God's first and greatest lesson to us was that we were not going to produce the fruits of faith on our own. Like everyone else, our flesh produces division, slander, and all those other things that Paul called the works or fruit of the flesh. It doesn't matter how good the motives of the human mind are, the carnal mind is the enemy of God, and it will always produce division...often "holy" division, where we have good and righteous reasons for mistreating our brethren.

The life we live now is the result of surrendering ourselves to God with a lot of fear and trembling, wondering whether we were really obeying God or just fooling ourselves. We made walking in obedience to the Spirit of God our goal, and we endeavor, as the Scripture commands, to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, trusting that the result would be a unity of faith as well, as Ephesians 4 seems to teach.

All we can say is that it worked. We have a unity that is clearly heaven-sent. We have learned to hear God together. We have experienced God's intervention on our behalf, whether to resolve problems, provide guidance, or just to discipline and grow us, day after day after day.

Our children are happy; they love this life, and they love and trust God with a faith that doesn't falter as they reach adulthood. Our adults are free. They are united, but not stifled. They work things out with one another, but they express their opinions and feelings openly and freely, so that the brotherhood we have is not forced or pretended, but real and heartfelt. We love like brothers and sisters, because we have fought like brothers and sisters, but our bond is deeper than our blood. Our bond is his blood, and it is precious, as Peter said, and spiritual and powerful, and able to produce the fruit of the Spirit which is love.

We're very impressed with the power of God.

For me, one of the most thrilling things I get to experience is that like Paul, we can say to one another, with experience to back us up, "He who has begun a good work in you will continually complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."

It bothered me for years that I couldn't say that in honesty, because I watched a large percentage of the people in the various churches I had been a part of weaken or fall away. The 60-year-olds were not more spiritual than the 20-year-olds. Some people went on; some grew; but growth was not the inevitable result of being in the church that Paul seemed to think it ought to be. Now, though, I see why.

Growth occurs as a result of the unity of the body of Christ, just like Ephesians 4 very clearly says, not out of individual commitment or willpower. Individual commitment is necessary, but it prospers and grows in the "Miracle-Gro" ground of the church, where every part does its share, causing the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love, until we all come to the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ.

So, how do I tell you more what we believe? We really believe in only one thing. We believe in following God together under the Lordship of his Son, Jesus Christ, holding nothing back, having nothing in reserve, casting everything in the pot, one for all and all for one, till death pulls us even more together in the heavenlies in Christ.

I hope that helps.

God bless you, and may his grace and peace be with you.


Question: Do you have a statement of faith?

Answer:
We don't have a statement of faith, although if we did, it wouldn't be lot different than anyone else's. We don't like the "once saved, always saved" doctrine and the attitude that goes with it that is typical of many American churches, but we know deeply what it means to be saved by grace and that we're hopelessly and helplessly in need of that grace every day.

You know, it might be fair to say that an important part of our statement of faith is that we think a statement of faith is dangerous.

Belief ought to be seen in life. What do we believe? Feel free to look, on our web site and in person, and judge what we believe.

But what might you be looking for in your question? Let me make an attempt at a one-paragraph statement of faith.

We believe Christ is worth living for. We believe he's really Lord, really present, really able to be King of his people. We believe he can solve every problem. We believe his primary goal is to build a kingdom for his Father, a household for the Father to rule over, and a body for himself to dwell in, absolutely united in love, just as he and the Father are. We believe that to make that happen, he speaks to us every day, and every day we are to die to our own desires and take up his, leading to the most delightful and secure life available on this earth. We believe that individuals, especially the individual that is our self, are not to be trusted, but that we should live in each others' hearts, bouncing our ideas and thoughts off one another rather than just trusting anything and everything we think we hear from God. We also believe, though, that the best way to judge anything is to see the results of it, so we are very open to trying lots of ideas and giving lots of freedom, as long as we're quick to back up and change direction when we see our deeds or ideas are not fruitful, pure, and good.

Perhaps above all, we believe that God is our Father and that he is a good Father. We believe that if we are obedient to him, and we love his Word, and if we will change directions when we can tell that he wants us to change directions, then he, like every good Father, will take responsibility for making sure we know what we are supposed to do and that we are growing. Hearing, in the end, is not our responsibility, but his. Listening, that's our responsibility. Hearing he takes care of, because he wants us to know.

That's what we believe, and we like the Life he has created, which he sent down from heaven, so that we can share it with him.


Question: What are some of your specific beliefs and doctrines?

Answer:
Jesus Christ, whom we normally refer to as Yahshua, is the Son of God, who gave himself for us on a cross. He died for all so that all should live for him. We believe that he did not come just to create superstar individuals who could live for him on their own (hardly anyone can), but he died to create a society for God, a family marked by a love, unity, and freedom unknown to those who do not live by his Spirit.

Above everything else, our focus is to live every day by the guidance of God, loving and serving on another. Love, unity, and freedom come only as we "speak the truth to one another in love." We don't stuff our emotions or pretend like we're perfect. Instead, we work things out. We learn to talk, to be honest, and in the end, to get past our own will, find the will of God, and lay our lives down for each other. This takes each of us getting to know God, because in the end the children of God love the will of God, and the will of God is what will please their heart.

We don't spend much time on other doctrines that are mostly a matter of paperwork, anyway. We do eventually baptize those who come to us and will stay.


Question: Your manner of spreading the word isn't the sort used by most Christian groups, which leaves my curiosity piqued. Do you believe in sharing your beliefs at all?

Answer:
Right, we believe in Paul's manner instead: "demonstration of Spirit and power." Either we got it or we don't. Either folks want it or they don't. To borrow an often repeated phrase from the writings of the early church fathers, "God doesn't compel people to come to him."

On the other hand, wherever we feel God telling us we should talk, we do.

We love God, and we believe in laying our lives down for him every day. Learning how to do that has changed our whole view of God. It's harder and much more wonderful than we could possibly have foreseen. And it's not hard the way you normally think of hard, where you grit your teeth, sweat, sacrifice, and stay quiet and holy. We mostly just get up every day and enjoy work, life, and each other.

But in the midst of that the hand of God quietly works, stirring up everything inside and reshaping it so that you can be free, outgoing, honest, and passionate about Christ and his message, but kind, loving and tolerant all at the same time. We humans are not like that naturally. Perhaps you've noticed.

Anyway, that's us.


Question: What are your beliefs concerning the government?

Answer:
We've never seen God bless fear of the government, except for godly fear of wrongdoing. Doesn't he tell us to submit wherever we can? The wording in Peter is "...to every ordinance of man." We're used to thinking of that as being "to every law of man," but if I remember correctly, that's not accurate. "Every ordinance of man" means every authority of man, such as kings, governors, the IRS, etc.

We've never been burned for swallowing our fear and submitting. In fact, let me say that I've gone to lawyers and accountants, but the people that have helped me the most to know how to save on my taxes is the IRS. After one IRS lady called me to tell me our chapter S corporation was set up wrong, I told her a lawyer did it for us. She said, "Do you want me to save you some money?" I said, "Sure." She said, "Before you spend money on an accountant or a lawyer, call us. We're free, and if the question is too technical for the person who answers the phone, ask to speak to a specialist, and they'll put you through."

We experienced the same thing when the Department of Child Services came out to see our children. They had heard terrible things about us, but we had heard terrible things about them, too. In the midst of all those rumors, there's God. DCS stopped at the sheriff's office on the way in, and the sheriff said, "I know those people, and you're not taking any children until you've talked to them." They talked to us. They talked to our children. They talked to every one of our children over the course of twelve hours. There were about fifteen agents.

The result? They had tears in their eyes, and they were excited that there were parents and children like the ones they'd met. The head of McNairy County's DCS became one of our biggest supporters and defenders. It doesn't get any better than that, and it happened because we chose to submit.

We had parents who were tempted to hide their children, and there were other parents who wanted to flee into the woods. DCS has a horrible reputation among Christians; probably deservedly so. But we chose to trust God.

Do you know what we learned? We learned, by experience, that one more time, the Bible is true. This may be hard to hear, but I think it's very clearly Biblical: God will take responsibility for what the government does.

Think about it. I think it's Biblical, and I think that I've seen God bless trust in him (not trust in government, but in him), and I've never seen him bless fear of authorities. He blesses, and even commands, the fear that causes you to obey the government, but where does the Bible ever prescribe the sort of fear that causes you to disobey or be uncooperative with the government? The only case where the Bible would support disobeying the government is if authorities asked you to clearly disobey His commands.


Question: What do you believe about Halloween and other holidays?

Answer:
Not everyone here is totally comfortable with touching Halloween. We don't really consider ourselves to be celebrating Halloween, but we've still had to talk to each other to determine whether it's really okay to do haunted hayrides or "door-to-door candy collecting." We've even made jokes about it, calling the hayride an "emotionally stimulating dead grass ride" rather than a haunted hayride.

We are finding our way. Let me give you a couple reasons we've felt okay about exploring.

First, the haunted house we did, and the scary hayride and trail walk were a lot of fun. We toned it down for the real little kids, and we made sure they had adult accompaniment. It clearly was fun for everyone. We didn't have anything gory at all, and even our most dramatic attempts at scaring the adults resulted in hilarious laughter, or startled screams. We're not very scary people!

Second, none of the children believe in the things that were "scary" on the ride. We don't believe in them, either. Witches on brooms and ghouls are not things to be frightened of. There are spirits that are the enemies of the kingdom of God. Those spirits are real, and we do not make jokes about them or have pretend games about them. We warn our children and each other that our enemies are principalities and powers in high places, and that we do not war against flesh and blood. Lust, anger, greed, and selfishness of all forms are never games to us. Deception and fear are enemies to be disposed of by the mighty weapons of warfare that our God is training us to use. We do not play silly games or allow silly talk about such things. It is important to be able to love people, and to see the enemy that enslaves them to selfishness and the ways of this age.

Third, we don't believe that God has backed up anti-holiday theology. We used to believe it, and we even wrote a booklet against all pagan holidays back in Geneva, FL, about a decade ago. We completely ignored Christmas, and we certainly avoided any appearance of celebrating something as terrible as All Hallow's Eve. However, we didn't feel God backing us up in that. No matter how nice we tried to be, ignoring Christmas made us feel callous, not holy. And we have never seen God judge anyone for keeping a holiday.

We celebrated Christmas last year. What a delight! Our children all remember it as a wonderful time. They didn't get any gifts, but I'm pretty sure not one of them noticed. They got lights, warmth, eggnog, warm fires, joyous songs, and planned times together with family and friends. They hung stockings in our "living room," (the big meeting building we built that is now a school room). They passed notes in those stockings and gave candy to each other.

However, the only gifts they saw were the ones they bought with saved money from allowances and work, which they gave to needy families in the area. I still get teary-eyed at the success of this; that children would really learn to be selfless. We didn't have to teach them that giving was better than receiving. They were so busy giving, that none of them noticed they didn't receive.

It's important to give God place, and to put God before holidays...and before friends, family, society, and even before life itself. However, it's important to give God the place God takes, not the place we want him to take in order to look good. We will most certainly drop anything associated with Halloween if we sense God's displeasure. We had a lot of fun this year, though (on the 30th, and not the 31st, because the holiday really doesn't matter to us). We had time together. People worked together, yes, to scare the kids and other adults, but really, in the end, to give them a good time. And that was a success.

Let me add one fourth and final thing. One of the Scriptures we used to use against holidays said that God did not want the name of old gods remembered. It turns out that the name of the Nordic god Frey is remembered in Friday. The name of the Egyptian goddess Oestre is remembered in Easter. Saturn is remembered in Saturday and in the name of the planet, as are Mars, Mercury, Neptune, etc.

However, how do I know that Friday is named after Frey, the Nordic god? I know it from those who preach and teach against holidays. Why would I consider the name of the planet Mars to honor a Roman god of war? Because those who preach and teach against such names told me it does. God wants the name of false gods forgotten. They are forgotten! Mars is a planet, not a god, and almost every person in America either knows that Mars is a non-existent deity, or they never found out the name Mars had anything to do with a deity at all. If those who are against holidays would be silent, then all honor to Mars, Frey, Oestre, and all honor to the druid practices of All Hallow's Eve would be forgotten, laughed at, and ignored. If it is dishonoring to God to use the name Jesus as an expletive and to use the name Yahweh in vain or meaninglessly, then why should we consider it honoring to gods that everyone knows don't exist if the names Frey and Oestre are used meaninglessly?

Happy Thanksgiving Day!


Question: I just read Deut 14; I am not sure what to make of it. What do you believe about tithing?

Answer:
It's a neat passage, I think. Basically, Deut 14:22 gives a description of tithing that is absolutely unlike any description I ever heard in any church anywhere. You get to take your tithe, go to the festival in Jerusalem, and have a huge party. The KJV has incredible wording on the matter: "...thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever your soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink..." It doesn't get much better than that if you're after the things of the flesh. Imagine what would happen if churches taught that kind of Biblical tithing to their congregations.

Now despite the serious temptation this verse poses, we believe neither in tithing nor in getting drunk.

Just two comments on the matter: One on why we don't tithe, and one on why God would encourage the Israelites to buy strong drink and have such a feast.

Let's start with the Israelites' tithe in Deut 14. First let me say that every third year they had to give their tithe to the Levites, the fatherless, and the widows. God does always go out of his way to take care of the widows and orphans and his workers as well. But he also takes care of everyone else. The feasts of Israel were a time of rejoicing over the goodness of God, and the tithe provided a means to do so. God provided the needs of the Israelites, and out of God's provision they set aside a tenth for a time of celebration together with God. It was obviously an abundant and loose celebration, and personally, I think it teaches us something about God that he commanded such a thing. He might not be as narrow as we've been led to believe by traditional religion.

Here in Rose Creek Village, though, we don't follow in the Israelites' footsteps. The Old Covenant was a fleshly picture of the New Covenant. What the Old Covenant provided physically, the New Covenant provides spiritually. Being rich was a sign of blessing under the Old Covenant, because the Old Covenant was concerned with earthly things, including earthly riches. The New Covenant, however, provides spiritual riches in heaven, and earthly riches are not the goal, and they can even be a curse.

The early churches didn't tithe, just as they didn't circumcise, sacrifice bulls and goats, nor keep the Sabbath. Tithing was reinstated in France in the 8th century under Pepin the Short, when a local monastery asked him for financial help. He instituted tithing to support them, and the west being the way it was then, it stuck. That was from the time before the Protestants, and the Protestants retained tithing when they split from the Catholics. As you can see from Deut 14, the tithe of Pepin--a tax to support monks--didn't bear much resemblance to the tithe that's in the Law of Moses.

We don't tithe. We share everything and call nothing our own. That's the New Testament pattern. And it's a good thing, because the tithe can't work in America anymore; not in a real church. Here's one of the reasons why.

Divorce wasn't all that common in Israel. Nor was it very common in America a generation or two ago. Today, though, about half of all marriages will lead to a divorce. The result is that there are a lot of divorced women with children in America. A lot! These women are in the same boat as women whose husbands died. In other words, they are the widows and orphans that God has commanded his people to care about.

In Israel, about 3% of the income (that's the tithe divided by three years) would do the job for the widows and orphans (even with the Levites thrown in!). We can tell you from experience that doesn't work anymore. There are too many of them, and the men of Rose Creek Village put in a lot more than 10% in order to support the widows and orphans, pay for the land we're on, and expand so that others can leave the sort of society that produces so many widows and orphans and come to one that only produces widows and orphans when men die.

Anyway, that's my take on Deut 14. I love that passage, and I love the picture it paints of God. I haven't talked to anyone here about that passage in years, but from experience, I can tell you that my brothers and sisters here are never thrown by the Scriptures. They adapt easily. When they found out that "Seraphim" means "snakes," no one flipped out. We said, "Wow, winged snakes! Those are dragons! There are dragons in heaven! Neat! We've always liked dragons, too!" So I'm confident my brothers and sisters like Deut 14 just like they like the rest of Scripture. The more we learn about God, the more we like him.


Question: Some groups are centered around a charismatic figure or a set of authoritative rules. Are you more open than these groups?

Answer:
The answer is yes. We are not doing all of this for some grand, new philosophy, nor for an end-time prophet. We are guilty of only of wanting to be in the family of God or of wanting to see the Church, that glorious and holy thing described in the Book of Acts, functioning on the earth again. We aren't satisfied with Wednesday and Sunday, and we oppose the whole mind set that says that the Church is about twice a week meetings or about accepting Jesus and then living for yourself.

Our Gospel is that coming to Christ means leaving your own life behind and beginning to live his. Our Gospel is that his life is much better than ours, and we think there's no better offer available on earth than that you can come be a part of God's family.

We are aware that we are not the only people on earth who think that. Like I said earlier, we love Watchman Nee, and he built churches in China--real churches, devoted to God, partaking of his grace, one under Christ, not divided into denominations. We hear that there are still churches like that there, persecuted and brave. We do think it's awful hard, maybe impossible, to find such churches in the United States, but we do know there are people who know God like we do, and they're not as hard to find. It's normally very easy to assimilate those people. They already think like us. They move right in like they've been here forever. It's very sweet and pleasant.

We care about life and action. We love God, and we seek to be united with all who will submit to God with all their heart. We don't care very much about dogmas. We definitely don't share others' sort of "we're the only ones" mentality. We don't keep the Sabbath, and the chances are pretty good no one will ever talk us into believing that God cares about working on Saturday. We don't speak in tongues, but if anyone here did speak in tongues, we probably wouldn't forbid it, nor even pay any attention to it.

We think the Trinity is awful hard to understand, and we don't spend any time trying to define God, even though everyone here believes that Yahshua is divine, just like the Father is. If doctrinal battles are a big thing to you, you'll have a hard time here, because it's hard to get anyone to care about anything that doesn't translate into action. We're too busy doing the will of God to be arguing about things that are of no practical value. Following God wears a person out thoroughly enough without all that other stuff.

Our life's awesome, exciting, fulfilling, full of purpose, and downright delightful, -- and exhausting. We joke that we live 5 lifetimes in one!

Well, that's us. I can't imagine you'll get a better description than that without coming here. We're very real, and despite slanderous web pages, there's nothing hidden away or secret about us. It's all up-front.


Question: We saw something kind of disturbing on a webpage and were wondering if you could clarify it before we come for a visit.

Answer:
That page will probably not be the last "disturbing" thing you hear about us. Should you come out to visit, I think you'll find it a lot easier to dismiss all that nonsense. A couple of things: Most of the accusations on that page are just made up, especially the stuff about Noah. However, there was really a lawsuit filed against the State of Florida, because they had agreed to let a divorced father have custody here with us. The divorce had happened several years before we met the father. The mother got custody back during the whole length of the lawsuit, but I guess the lawsuit ended, because she sent all the children back a couple months ago of her own volition (so how bad did she really think it was here?). The rest of it is all people's imagination.

There is one more thing. One post talked about us changing drastically and repenting. There was a point about four years ago where we felt God telling us we weren't very nice; that we were both haughty and mean. For that we repented, and I'm sure people around us felt the change. Certainly our relatives did. I think word got around that we repented for a bunch of false beliefs. We didn't, because all those "false beliefs," like believing in fairies and separating families and the like were never true. That was all just more slander about us. Why would we repent for things that never happened? (Well, the name changes happened, but we aren't repenting for that, because we think that's Biblical. We don't change everyone's name, but name changes still happen here.)


Question: I'd be interested in how you support yourselves: cottage industries, etc.

Answer:
We have four main businesses. We have a Painting Business (commercial and residential), a Construction Business (currently doing mostly decks and trim work), a Solar Tint Business (installing architectural films on buildings, both residential & commercial), and a Distribution Center (office and warehouse services).

We also have a cafe, with all sisters working there. It's in the front of the Distribution's warehouse, and it's where our main corporate offices are, too. The cafe doesn't make much money, though. It's sort of fun, and it gives us contact with the community, so it's good. We are hoping to expand to breakfast, carefully, and help the business be profitable, but we'll see. Another local restaurant manager agreed to help us with that.

We have only one brother who is still working outside of our businesses. We pool resources, but it's not all a common treasury. The businesses pay somewhat based on budget and somewhat based on production. We each contribute a set amount each week to the village, based on what the village needs. That can vary, because we support the single moms, of which we have several, as well as the more standard expenses a village like ours must face, including new buildings, housing, and the maintenance of old ones, plus the festivals and stuff.


Question: How would one go about joining the folks at Rose Creek? Would we just pack up our belongings and show up? :) Or is there a process?

Answer:
There's never been a process, but we need one; though I think we'd prefer it be an informal one. You have to visit first. There are people who are very suspicious of us, and we tell them the only way they will know what we're like is to meet us. Other times we get wonderful, positive letters like yours, but still, the only way to get to know us is to meet us.

We take the service of God very seriously. We laugh, dance, and enjoy life, because that is how God has taught us to live, but we live for one reason, which is the service of God through his Son.

Every person who lives here has committed themselves to living by the guidance of the Spirit of God and to sharing this life together with every other person here. For us, that doesn't mean selling flowers on the street corner like the Hare Krishna's or going door to door like the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, nor even emphasizing "spreading the Word." It means living like children of God, full of kindness, boldly honest, and never complaining.

So the first step is to visit. Get to know us, and get to know what we mean by serving God. After that, we can see what happens.


Question: I'm wondering; what ARE you up to? If it's just setting a good example of a Godly life, well, I congratulate you on doing a better than average job.

Answer:
Thank you for your congratulations, because basically, yes, setting a good example of a Godly life is basically what we are up to.

We're even glad you capitalized Godly, because we believe we are living a divine life, sent down from Heaven, not just a good life, produced by our obedience. Our life is the product of an intense longing to be more than just a bunch of Christians. We wanted to be the church, the body of Christ that the Spirit of God lives in and moves through. We wanted to experience one verse in particular. It reads:

"...Till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, resulting in a perfect man that measures up to the full stature of Christ...from whom the whole body--closely joined together and united by the supply of every joint, as every part does its share--grows itself-- for the building up of itself in love." (my own paraphrase)

I know that's difficult, somewhat religious terminology. I don't know how to make it better (it's from Eph 4). It describes what we wanted, though. Here's an easier one:

"And the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul. None of them said that anything they possessed was their own, but they had everything in common...and great grace was upon them all." (from Acts)

That's what we asked God for, and that's what we determined was worth all our possessions and all our life.

We didn't make any outlines, rules or plans for it. We just tried to forget all our own ideas and prejudices and ask God how he could make it happen, because we had seen attempts at such a life fail so often.

This one succeeded!


Question: How does one join Rose Creek Village or move there?

Answer:
BLURB: Recently a man visited our website and asked a few questions. Our response is a good short summation of our life together as well as answering how one comes to join us.

Thanks for your email. I'll be happy to answer your questions.

I want to make sure you understand that we are together for the purpose of glorifying God with our lives, both individually and corporately. We are indeed enjoying ourselves, because it is God who made us, and he made us for his will and pleasure. It is the delight of the heart of his creatures to live within his will. Nothing else will completely satisfy them. Thus, in the end everything we do is for his enjoyment and to fulfill the needs of his will, not our own. Each member here has committed himself to the kingdom of God, to the commands of God, and is diligently seeking to do the will of God by living by his Spirit.

Thus, if you ever ended up moving here, you would eventually be told that you need to set aside your own needs and wants, because Christ's call to his disciples was to hate their own souls, so that they might save it in the end. He called all his disciples to "deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me."

You can see the results of obeying Christ's call on our web site. The corporate life he sends down from heaven is one of love and service to one another and to those who are outside. It is a full and powerful life, lived in companionship with God.

If that is not frightening to you, and you would still like to know more, the next step for everyone is to visit, so that you can touch our hearts and see our life firsthand. We recommend people come for at least a week or two, maybe in several visits, not just one, depending on what's most convenient. After that, joining is really just a matter of coming and being with us. Those that are called to be a part of it are joined spiritually to it and to us, and us to them, and they generally find it impossible to live separate from this life.


Do you have any other questions? We'd love to hear from you!

logo for Rose Creek Village