Transferring the Excess

An interview with Our House Community 

By Judy Naegeli, Mustard Seed Associates 

 

 

When I got to Our House, which sits between a dollar store and a wheelchair manufacturer on Stone Way in Seattle, I quickly found out that most of the food we would be eating that night came from a dumpster. In fact, Abby estimated that they “dumpster” 75% of their food—bread, vegetables, olive oil, packaged food. Lindsay called it “transferring the excess.”

"It allows us to be very liberal with our food," Cory said. "We can have an attitude of 'this was a blessing that we just received.' It’s not just ours to hold onto; we can share it with others." This turned out to be a major theme of the evening.

So began a meal of baked brie, apples, pears, risotto and bread, and a conversation with four house members—Abby McPhearson, Cory Deppe, Lindsey Beach and Ben Kaspar—about the formation and mission of Our House.

MSA: So, I want to hear the whole story. What was the beginning of this house? How did you all meet? How did you decide this is what you wanted? 

Ben: We’re all students at SPU, so that’s how we met. I think it started in a couple different ways. Pretty much, all at the same time, in January of last year, which was one of the really cool parts, God laid on our hearts a desire to learn more about community living—how it’s discussed in Scripture, through professors, and in churches that we were going to. 

Cory: God had been working in our hearts, but how it came about to actually expose it together was really the mystery of God. We all mysteriously began to say to each other: “This is what’s been brewing inside me. This is a deep desire.” It kind of came into fruition last winter quarter, a little over a year ago. 

Abby: Lindsey, Ben and Cory were in conversation about it before Heather and me, and then Ben and I were making dinner together one night in January. We were heading back to his house from Whole Foods, and he’s like “Abby, where are you living next year?” And I had no answer. I said, “Well, I don’t want to live in the dorms; I want to live off campus, but I’m a sophomore.” That means I didn’t have any other choice unless I lived in on-campus housing. And he started to tell me his heart, how he had been in conversation with Lindsey and Cory about living in community and what he’s been feeling God has been telling him. I was pretty speechless for a while because it had also been on my heart, but I was sort of at this place of only having been thinking about it for maybe a month or month and a half. And even the words “intentional community” weren’t brand new, but relatively new to me. I didn’t know that people actually wanted to live that way. I thought I was sort of alone in that, which maybe we could all say, that we all felt that way in the beginning. So, I began getting really excited. I had one-on-one conversations with Ben in the library at different times at school and then talked with Lindsey once and Cory once. And then we all got to this place where we said, “Let’s make this happen. Let’s make it a reality.” So we started meeting every Wednesday night for three or four months. 

Cory: At the beginning in January, Ben and I started going to Sanctuary Church together. And a professor from SPU was there, saying, “Next Sunday, I’m going to start a small group talking about Christian community inside the church, inside homes, inside neighborhoods, just looking at what we do as a Christian body and how we interact.” In that group, we went through a lot of texts and different practices, monastic traditions, things Bonhoeffer had written. And there were a few members who lived in intentional community in that small group, too. One of them is an interning pastor at Sanctuary, Ben, and he and his wife are actually now our household mentors this year. We’re a part of their lives; they’re a part of ours. So, that small group time at the beginning was really important for me because for a few years I’d been looking for Christian community, but never believing it could happen.  

MSA: Where had you heard about Christian community before the small group time? What inspired you to want to live this way? 

Cory: Well, my parents started a community in the ‘70s that was called Christ Community, with 17 people in one household for nine years. It’s where my siblings were born. I knew about those relationships—I had never lived there—but I knew how bonded they were and what shared history they had together and the healing that had taken place in their lives and the pain they had gone through together. And I knew that God had moved them to start that community and start a church, eventually. It was a very real time of their faith. Those stories rubbed off on me. In that environment, you can really learn to live the Gospel in a small way or point each other towards God because it’s pretty hard on your own. 

Lindsey: I think I experienced typical not-Christian community. I grew up in a very rural setting where it was about us on our land, hanging out, and we’d have friends over once in a while, but it wasn’t a lifestyle community. So I think I was searching for that—without labels because I didn’t really know what it was going to look like—but knowing that I wanted to live with people that took their relationship with God seriously and connect with them on that level. I read The Irresistible Revolution and it was amazing. It just gave words to everything that I had been feeling. So, I was really excited about the idea and decided to start something. I started talking to people that I thought would be susceptible to my ranting, but they weren’t. So halfway through fall quarter, I thought, “well maybe this isn’t what’s on my plate for next year,” and I stopped thinking about it, and gave it up.  

Then, right after that, Cory called me and said, “Hey, Ben and I are in the library. You wanna come on up?” So I went to the library and they shared what they had been learning at Sanctuary, and I said, “well, maybe this is it!” So we kind of made a little pact, or just said, “Ok, we’re living together.” And I was like, “we have to find other people. I can’t live with two boys in an apartment next year!” 

We talked about how we didn’t want it to be just a trendy, cool thing or a rebellious thing, so even from the beginning, it was a very slow process that was rooted in taking things as they come and going with the process more than forcing anything to happen. 

Ben: When we made that initial commitment, I think that was a way of seeing the dialogue in a different context. Before then, it was on a very conceptual level, I guess, of bouncing these ideas around that were from the book or from the class. And then, once we sat down and looked at each other and submitted in a way, even though we didn’t know details, we knew that the conversation was now about our lives. 

At this point in the conversation, Ben’s older brother David and his girlfriend, Michelle, came in for a visit on their way to eat out. They are apparently well-known in the house, and the conversation was casual, laughter-filled, informal and relaxed. Abby offered them food, but they said they were going to Thai food. And then, they asked about a guy named Richard, and were told that he was at a Mariners game. “So American,” Cory said. And David replied, “He’s fitting in perfectly.” 

Cory [to me]: I guess we didn’t really mention that we have a Dutchman living with us right now just for winter quarter. He has an internship in Fremont at a bio-chemical blood storage lab, so he’s a working man and 26. He’s a chemical engineer, and he’s quite a bit different from us, not just culturally, but scientifically. It’s been a crazy challenge, and a lovely thing to have him here. We’re learning a little bit more about ourselves…or a lot. 

David and Michelle left, and the house members started discussing where they are in the story. Someone suggested that they talk about Street Level. 

Cory: So there’s this mission of the Salvation Army in the International District [just south of downtown Seattle], and we became familiar with them a little bit because they were starting to rent out units in transitional housing in order to bring in people from more stable backgrounds—from a family, with certain structure to their lives—to live side-by-side with people who were transitioning off the street or experiencing a time of economic disparity or whatever. At the time, we didn’t know where to go, how to find a house, what to do, and Street Level was this already-formed ministry. They were like, “we just need people to fill these roles, to live here and build relationships, meet in bible study, meet in prayer and minister to them just by being there.” We went to a few meetings about it, but God brought us away from that. It was really hard to realize that wasn’t where we were heading. He showed us that we were still university students. We had a lot on our plate where we had already been placed, being part of the body of the university. 

Abby: Street Level seemed like an answer. We took a long time trying to figure things out and we decided that God wasn’t taking us there. We felt that it wasn’t the right place for us. We walked away from that asking, “How is it right for us to take transitional housing away from people who actually need it?” It was low-income housing, definitely something we could afford, but was that something we should be doing? Also, the commute to SPU was going to be a huge deal, and so we started talking about what it looks like to want to be a community that’s trying to live Christianity out in a really intentional way, but also be students… 

Ben: Still very connected to the SPU community. Many of us are in leadership roles on campus. Cory’s a senator; Lindsey’s the urban involvement coordinator; Abby and I are involved with Acting on AIDS. 

Lindsey: Through that process we were able to solidify more what we were about. And I think it was a really practical step for us to find out what this would actually look like with us being students and being respectful of the previous relationships we had. We also realized that SPU is a place that needs authentic Christian ministry just as much as anywhere else. Proximity to campus allows us to be more deeply invested in it and to provide people there with an alternative perspective on community or even a safe haven for people who looking for something different. 

I think the Street Level thing was really hard to watch die, to realize, at least for me, that I couldn’t do everything. I couldn’t be in a community in the international district where I’d be serving everyone, or being accessible to people who might have more visible needs, and then maintaining all my relationships at SPU and be a profitable student and be able to sleep. So I think that was step in realizing who we were and having a stronger sense of identity, and maybe a more realistic sense of identity, too.  

After that, we started realizing that we were a mixed-gender group, and we also realized that SPU has pretty specific guidelines on those situations in the spirit of sexual purity. We wanted to be above board with our university. We didn’t want to go ahead with this idea, but have it be kind of quiet. We just felt that it would be completely dishonest and counter-intuitive to what we were trying to do. 

Abby: We love the relationships with professors that we have, and as time has gone on, we’ve had them over for dinner, and we knew that we couldn’t do those things and keep really honest, transparent relationships if we weren’t honest about our lifestyle. 

Lindsey: We didn’t really know what path to take to approach SPU. We started researching forms to fill out, but it’s a Lifestyle Expectation, you know. You can’t get a form to drink on the weekends. So, we started meeting together more intensely and drafted a lot of documents in preparation for a meeting with Residence Life. It was also hugely formational to sit down and talk about who we were, what we were going to be about, how that would look in our house. 

Cory: We developed a covenant that we all take part in as a community. 

Ben: It includes attitudes we want to hold—attitudes of encouragement and service, transparency. And it’s not to say that we fulfill those all the time either, which is humbling, but it’s a goal and we’re committed to trying. It’s always a process, which is the beautiful part. 

Abby: We talked about precautions for us living together as male and female, like, we have separate bathrooms or and we keep our doors open when the opposite sex is in there. Little things, but things that do really matter.  

Ben: We got letters from professors that were closer to us, and our mentors. 

Abby: And we went and met with them to ask for their help and support. 

Lindsey: To join our army basically. So, then, we went to the meeting and it was 15 minutes long. They said, “we’re so excited that you’re doing this. Have fun. Keep us updated.” And we were speechless. We worked like 400 hours collectively to sit in this meeting, and it was only 15 minutes. 

Cory: I think some people did say that this was a dumb idea, living as male and female, trying to deal with what arises from that, trying to share finances or share time. A lot of people approached it with doubt, and it’s been a really healthy challenge. 

Lindsey: After that, we started talking about location, but we didn’t have very much time together after we found out we were allowed to live off campus. Ben left to go to the East Coast to sell books, Cory was in Europe for all of spring and summer, and a girl who didn’t end up living with us went home to California. Heather, Abby and I were in Seattle, so we had the joy of finding a house. 

Abby: We found a house through someone from church that seemed perfect. The house had a porch, two fridges, a roof porch and a garden. And the landlord wanted to have an intentional community living in the house. 

Lindsey: But when we met with her, she challenged us pretty strongly on the male-female issue. There were so many things that were present in that situation that made it seem so right, and so of God, but then to have them not be fulfilled was confusing and hurtful. By the end of the meeting, all four of us were crying, because it obviously wasn’t going to work out. We just adamantly disagreed on what Christian community could look like. We walked away from it and said, “What the hell just happened? We had a house and it was perfect and it had God written all over it and it just exploded in our lives.” We had nowhere to live and it was the end of July. Abby then left for Indiana. So Heather and I took some time to step back and reflect on it. It was a huge process of learning how to trust—the radical trust of “OK, the house didn’t work out, but that’s ok. We have to live somewhere; we’re probably not going to be homeless.” And also, we watched our hearts, making sure that they were in line with where God was in this process.  

So, then we started an insane search for a house. It’s high-stress to the max. It was mid-August and all the other students were looking. But then, we were in the library and Abby found this place. And we came over and the tenants were here and they said, “If you can find any other house, rent it. The landlord is terrible!” But the house is huge and cheap, ‘cause it’s on Stone Way. 

Cory: Who lives on Stone Way? 

Lindsey: I think we’re the only house on the street. There was nothing really mystical about this house, but sometimes God provides in really white-toast kind of ways. Maybe it’s nothing to jump about, but we have a house. 

Abby: So then, Lindsay, Heather and I moved in and went shopping—Good Will shopping, Value Village shopping, Good Will “by the pound” shopping—and bought essentials and found furniture. The majority of all the materials in this house were either gifts, or we found them in dumpsters or the side of the road. So that was a real blessing, how things that we needed and didn’t know how to pay for were all provided for us. It was nice to feel like we had a home that people could come home to from their summer away and get excited about and bring their personality to with the things they had to bring. That was exciting. 

Cory: Yeah, when we all came together, it was such a big deal to sit and just look at each other and say “we live here,” and hear what had gone on while we were separate. We also had to organize ourselves, take it all a little further to practicalities.  

MSA: A couple of you have talked about wanting to “live out the Gospel.” What does that mean for you all? And what does it look like in this community? What are your values? 

Abby: We looked a lot to the early church and how they came together as community. One of the main Scriptures we looked at was Acts 2:42-49. We wanted to pick up those practices because we saw importance in them in our life today: to come together daily, meet together regularly, share meals together, and in that way share life together in love. The early church found community so important, so we studied what that was. What made community so awesome and so relevant in their lives, and in our lives? There is such a need for it, especially with how most of us live today, and especially our age group. I think maybe it would be really hard for adults, like my mom, to begin living in community now that she’s gone through 53 years of her life already. What would that look like? Where we are—young college students—it’s a really good time for us to be discovering what God has for us. 

Lindsey: There is a really deep sense of honesty and a deep sense that this is a place where I can be completely me and completely loved for that, and also challenged in that. That’s where a lot of this is rooted—the sense of trust that we’ve developed with each other. And even if there’s little personality differences or things that might cause us some conflicts, the deep sense of commitment here and a deep sense of trust that allows us to practice anything that we preach. Without that commitment, it might be called into question a lot more. A lot of friendships don’t have that. Sometimes it’s like, “I don’t know if I can offend you and come ask for your forgiveness, because what if you’re already done with our relationship.” So, that commitment transfers to really deep trust. 

Cory: These are relationships that can handle that. We’re bonded together in a covenant that can handle all a person’s emotions. 

Ben: A verse that comes to mind is in 1 Corinthians. It talks about how our abundance can meet the needs of others, and that the abundance of others can meet our needs, so that no one is left alone, and everyone shares equally. And that’s been really good. We were talking about how we found things in the community. Some of our friends who didn’t need this entire dish set said, “here you go, I’m loaning it to you indefinitely.” And now we have a home that we can open to people who need rest away from campus or need a quiet place…or a noisy place, sometimes. 

Abby: We also looked at what people in the Bible did with the money that they had and how that applies to us. We are all working on-campus or off-campus, and so we looked at different models for finances. What does it mean to pay for our own food and eat our own food, like a lot of people that just live together in an apartment or a house? The alternative is to share all of our food and pool a certain amount of money per month as we pay our rent or utilities and put it into a checking account, which is what we have. We also went even further to look at a commonwealth. Some of our money goes to— I don’t know if we ever called it a tithe, but it’s some of what we’re making that we make available for people who have needs, whether it be something like a bike breaks down and we need a part for it, or if it means helping out a friend that can’t pay for school right now, and we have a few hundred dollars in our account that we haven’t done anything with. We’ve found other ways too, like sponsoring a child. Katie, a girl that didn’t end up living with us, her parents are part of an organization called Buyamba, which is an orphanage, essentially. So we thought it was really cool to be able to sponsor a child from someone we had a connection with who was working with those children every day and loving them. 

Cory: A lot of this is about getting together. Our lives are not just our own, and that’s actually been really hard for me. Our money is not our own; our possessions are not our own. We have a lot of resources that we can designate, allocate to give life abundantly to others. In sharing our house, freeing up more resources by living simply is something we’re striving for and learning a lot more about. And also our time in the house together—sometimes our time is for someone else. I have a lot of strong inclinations to just go sit and read by myself and get it all done, but I struggle to work against that. We’re for each other, and that means a lot of things, we’ve been finding out. We have house meetings every Tuesday night, which usually go for a few hours. And for a while we were having breakfast together, which is powerful and something we all really loved, to gather around and begin our day that way, in prayer and Scripture and a meal. 

Lindsey: We love food. 

Cory: Food is what we gather around. We have community dinners every other week and that’s a big potluck with like 20-30 people. We definitely want to be an open space for people who need somewhere to sleep or come in for dinner. We have a storage area of clothing downstairs that we’re able to give out to people that we know who need it. 

Abby: We donate to New Horizons a lot.

Cory: We have more and more people sleeping over, and a full house, a richly full house.  

Abby: Six weeks ago, we had thirteen students from Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids come and stay with us. They were here for their spring break. And one night, a friend of Lindsay’s called her up and said “all the electricity just went out on campus and I was supposed to have a meeting for my SMCs, and now we don’t have anywhere to do it. Is there any way we could come use your living room?” We didn’t know what it was going to be like, but we got really excited about it. We made cookies, tea, coffee and hot chocolate for them. We had a fire in the fireplace and they walked in so excited to be in a home. 

MSA: I’m curious about how you see your futures. What happens when you start getting married and having babies? Is this a short-term season of your life, or where do you see it going? 

Cory: I feel like there might be a lot of people who might distrust groups who are in their early twenties, and the older, maybe more “wise” people would look at them and say, “They don’t have families. They can do this now for these college years while they’re feeling it. They don’t have responsibilities.” It’s powerful to come together as a family inside a house, since we don’t have family right now, and to be inclusive of all the people around us, too, who have the same need to be a part of something. But I think, further on, if some of us find partners and are married, it’s just as important for that relationship to be surrounded and tightly held by a community of people. I don’t think it has to be manifested with sharing a simple house and a kitchen necessarily, but it can be a cohousing community development or an intentional time meeting over meals together. But it’s so important not to be isolated as a married couple from family or away from a group of others that you can really expose yourself to. 

I think for me, since eighth grade, I’ve been going on this theme that I want to live in community for a long time in whatever sense of that word—sharing a room, or sharing lives in different ways.  

Abby: I see myself in two ways, and that’s because I have no idea what God has for me, but it’s a strong desire of mine, and a need, to be in community for the rest of my life. I think that it can look a couple different ways and still be intentional. One is how my sister and brother now live in New York. They have been provided with a huge house in the middle of East Harlem, and somehow God makes Keren and Dan’s paycheck enough to cover the rent every month. Since they have been given such a huge place, they live out community by having people stay with them for months and months at a time. In their neighborhood, which is mostly an older population, they have become a hub where people come for everything. For friendship, because maybe they’ve never had that, or because Dan has a truck and the old lady with a garden across the street needs him to take her to Brooklyn to get gardening supplies. So they see that they are living intentionally with the community around them because they are seeking out those relationships. Sometimes people come to them and sometimes they go to people. 

Then I see what our friends Matt and Laura are doing. They share a home with another family and I think that’s really beautiful. I know that I like my privacy sometimes, and I have no idea how that would work for me and my husband and hopefully children, but I just see that as really beautiful. I don’t know how much courage I have in my life to say, “Yeah, I could do that,” but I know it’s a desire that hasn’t come from the air. God’s given that to me. 

Lindsey: This experience has changed the way I view relationships. You can be satisfied with a mediocre relationship if you’ve never known anything different, but when you’ve gone there and you’ve seen how it can be and you’ve seen how the body of Christ can manifest itself in flesh in the people that you live with and get excited about things with and mourn with and live life with. I think that that concept will never leave me, and I won’t be satisfied with relationships that don’t go past small talk or gossip. I’ve tasted something that’s so ripe and that has changed me for the rest of my life. It has also given me hope and will give me something to go for in those times when there might not be as much community in my life or maybe I’m transitioning. I know what’s good and will pursue that because that’s where God is. If that comes in a house, great. If it’s just relationships, awesome. 

Cory: I think you have our life story. 

Abby: I don’t think we’ve ever told it in such detail before. 

MSA: Well, I’m very honored to have heard it.