What do you think of Berry’s rules? How would you alter them as a Christian?
Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: what will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth?
Always include nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.
Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.
Always supply local needs first. (And only then think of exporting their products, first to nearby cities, and then to others.
Understand the unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of labor saving if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.
Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of the national or global economy.
Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.
Strive to produce as much of the community’s own energy as possible.
Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community
Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community for as long as possible before it is paid out.
Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, teaching its children.
See that the old and the young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily and not always in school. There must be no institutionalized child care and home for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.
Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalized. Whenever possible, these costs must be debited against monetary income.
Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.
Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, leaving people to face their calamities alone.
A rural community should always be acquainted with, and completely connected with, community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.
A sustainable rural economy will be dependent on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.
I think it sounds like a brilliant ideal, but how do you get folks to buy into it? If people aren’t convinced that changing the most basic ways of doing life is going to make them feel a lot better in a very short while, they aint gonna do it. And you will end up with 2-3% of the people struggling against the tide till they burn out or become embittered against the rest.
“Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the congregation as a network of neighborhoods, how each member participates in multiple neighborhoods, bringing the stories, treasures, and needs of those neighborhoods back to the church gathering. The church (meaning, of course, the gathering of persons), in turn, matures corporately as these are shared and nurtures the persons in the church, preparing each for continued ministry in their neighborhoods.
This quote certainly resonates with what I’ve been thinking. There is certainly a place for parachurch ministries, but since God is sovereign, might we not consider that God brings to each congregation the compliment of persons needed to do his work in that place? If this is the case, and I think it is, we ought to look first to the resources God has given us as a local people.
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I resonate with Paul’s thoughts and add one more…we seem quite adept at doing what we can to maintain status quo – change is difficult.
Reblogged this on Leading from the Middle.